Many Wands
by Rodwen Fefalas
Summary: The progression of the Dark Lord's original rise to power occurs at the same time that the lives of the Order of the Phoenix become intimately acquainted...those of Sirius Black and Marlene McKinnon, to be specific. Very rough. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

"He called me a dirty Hufflepuff."

Lily's eyes widened and she sat back in her chair with a huffing exhale. She shook her head at the opposite wall of the Charms classroom, her bright red hair swishing around her shoulders. A lot of the other students had stopped working long ago, but Marlene and Lily had been levitating objects all around the room for the past few hours without even thinking about what they were doing. Both of them had been too engrossed in their own thoughts, but now their thinking had ventured into what was going on in Marlene's life.

She pulled her blonde hair back into a low ponytail and kept waving her wand, but aside from shifting her toy goblet back and forth across the table, she wasn't really doing anything with it. "Look, Lily, I know he's your friend and all, but he's not one of mine and he's making sure I know it."

Lily shook her head. Her jaw hardened and she crossed her arms over her chest. "That doesn't sound right. That's not fair."

Marlene felt her friend's eyes on her face and glanced up at Lily, who looked pained and disbelieving. "Is that what he's been calling you all this time?" Lily asked.

Marlene nodded. "I didn't want to bring it up, but—"

Lily put a hand on her arm. "No, I know why you did that. I get it."

Marlene gave her a small smile that disappeared as soon as Lily began huffing again. As soon as they were dismissed, Lily shot to her feet and threw the strap of her bag over her head. Marlene blinked and watched her friend go.

"What are you doing?" she asked when Lily leaned behind the bleacher row of desks and pulled Marlene's stuff from under their feet.

"We're going to go talk to him," Lily said in a terse voice.

Marlene's mouth fell open and she shook her head in such hard, fast bursts that her ponytail slapped her in the face. "No! Lily! Please don't! I don't want him knowing my name!" she begged.

It was too late. Lily had not only taken her stuff hostage, but she was at the end of their row and she was walking out the door with the rest of their classmates.

"He's going to figure out who you are, anyway. We're all in the same year!" Lily was calling over her shoulder.

Marlene felt her cheeks and neck go bright red as a few Ravenclaws and another Gryffindor looked her way, but she got up and followed her friend out into the corridor.

_Dear Mum,_

_It's been a great year here. I can't believe it. Everything goes by so fast that I'm not sure I'll ever remember everything I've ever done. It's better than being a first year, which is sort of hard to believe. I've met so many nice people. It's no wonder you and dad loved Hogwarts so much._

_Lily and I are getting along quite well, even though she's a Gryffindor and I'm a Hufflepuff. She doesn't seem to mind it, though. I think she likes it for a laugh. Sometimes she says it's cute and calls me her "Little Hufflepuff Friend." I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it isn't a bad name at all, so I don't think I mind it all that much._

_Classes are still a bit hard. I'm never going to get the hang of potions. You said I should wait until I understand more about it and get to know it better, but I don't think that's how it's going to work for me. I love Transfiguration, though. I know dad always says it's a dead art and that no one's going to use it in a couple of years…but then why do they keep teaching it? Obviously there's something important to know. Maybe I'm not meant to be an Auror or a great witch who makes fantastic discoveries, but that doesn't mean Transfiguration doesn't come with some kinds of benefits, right?_

_Please don't tell him that that's my best class. I know you probably will because he likes to know everything, but please don't. And please don't tell my brothers. They're going to make fun of me enough as it is. I know you don't think they will, but you don't know them. Just promise me?_

_All right, well, I have to get going. I think my professor is starting to figure out that I'm not actually doing my work—I'm kidding! I'm kidding! I'd never be doing anything other than taking notes while I'm in class._

_Or would I? Ha ha ha!_

_I love you. Give dad a hug for me._

_-Marlene_

Marlene caught up to Lily in the corridor. She was walking fast and had Marlene's bag swinging at her side like a great big pendulum. Marlene caught up to her and snatched it from her friend's hands, but Lily just glanced at her over her shoulder and nodded, racing forward once more.

"Good, you've caught up. Now we can go confront him," she was saying between breaths.

"Lily, no!" Marlene snapped through clenched teeth. She struggled to throw the strap of her bag over her head and keep up with her friend as they turned the corner into the courtyard where at least a fourth of the student body had decided to lounge for the afternoon. Marlene stopped short when she caught sight of the face of the boy who'd been tormenting her.

He didn't see her, though. He looked up and his face lightened when he saw her friend. "Lily! I've been wondering where you'd gone off to," he called. He hopped up from his place in the grass beside a tall bush and held his arms out wide in front of him, as if he meant to give her a hug.

Marlene watched as Lily brushed them aside and came to stand almost chest-to-chest with him, her eyes narrowed. She wanted to slink off, but Lily's words kept her stationed and immobile.

"Listen, Severus, we need to talk," she was saying in a terse voice. Marlene and Severus both watched Lily as she turned around, and Marlene began to protest when Lily grabbed her arm, but she was pulled forward anyway, stumbling across the grass as Lily brought her face-to-face with her tormenter.

"I've heard that you're bullying my friend Marlene, here," Lily said.

Marlene kept her eyes on the ground, but she could feel his face as it turned towards her. She took a deep, shaking breath as Lily's arm came around her shoulders.

"What's he been calling you?" Lily asked into her ear. Marlene flinched—Lily's voice came out a little too loudly for her liking and she felt trapped between Lily's body and Severus's sneering face.

"D-dirty Huff-Hufflepuff," Marlene muttered. She immediately felt Lily turning back to Severus, but she didn't feel the boy's eyes leave her forehead.

"You've been calling her a dirty Hufflepuff, have you?" Lily demanded.

Severus waved his hand, something that Marlene could only see from her peripheral vision. "It's just a bit of fun. I didn't mean anything by it," he said in his whisper of a voice. Marlene didn't think he knew how to talk right. He always sounded like he'd just come out of having a bad cold, or lost his voice from screaming insults at people. She'd always thought it was his forte.

Lily's arm tightened around Marlene's shoulders. "That's not funny, Severus. That's cruel and unusual punishment. I don't like it when my friends are getting hurt," she said.

Marlene could see Severus take a step towards Lily and she gasped a bit, trying to recoil from his greasy-haired body, but Lily's arm trapped her in place and she wound up cowering against her friend.

"Then what are you going to do about James Potter, eh?" he asked in a low voice. "It's not as though he ever did me any favors!"

Marlene dared to look up. Severus's face had gone slack and the dark circles under his eyes seemed even more prominent than ever. She wondered if he ever slept, or if he just sat up in his Slytherin common room and pouted into the fire all night.

Lily sighed beside her and Marlene glanced at her friend. She knew James Potter hadn't been the greatest kid, that he sometimes bullied some of the younger students, but he hadn't known that he was getting to Severus. The Snape boy had always been the one to go after other people—or at least that was how Marlene had seen it.

Maybe it was just Marlene who he went after?

"James Potter is a different story—"

"It's the same bloody thing as this!" Severus snapped. Marlene jumped and felt her shoulders hunch over a little, the way they always did when she was trying to protect herself from things.

"And I'll take care of it! I told you I would!" Lily snapped back. Marlene could feel her body shaking a little bit and wondered if she ought to be listening to this—what felt like a private conversation. It did strike her as a little weird that Lily would have such discussions with Marlene's tormenter, but Marlene would admit to anyone that she didn't know all of Lily's closest friends.

"I will take care of it, Sev," she said as she lowered her arm from around Marlene's shoulders and picked up her friend's bag. Marlene dared to glance at the Snape boy and was somewhat taken aback at the pain that was glowing there. Lily pointed a finger at him. "But just don't forget—if you don't like it when Potter does it, then do you think you ought to be going around doing things like he does, too? Or does that just make you more enemies?" she asked, turning her finger towards Marlene.

She watched Severus clench his jaw and nod, but then he turned around with a swirl of his robes and sat back on the ground with a thump and a huff. Marlene looked at Lily, whose face had fallen, and graciously accepted her bag again.

"He won't bother you any more," Lily promised in undertones as they walked away from her friend and back into the corridor.

Marlene bent her head towards Lily. "I didn't know he was being bullied by James," she said.

Lily smiled a little bit, but it was a pained smile and it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Yeah, he's having a hard time with him. Potter's an arrogant little toe-rag." She put up a finger. "But that doesn't mean Severus should be allowed to be. And please, Marlene," she said, stopping. Lily took Marlene by the shoulders and looked squarely into her friend's eyes. "Please don't say anything to anyone about this. Sev gets it bad enough as it is. We don't need the whole school knowing."

Marlene nodded her head. She didn't like the worried glowing that came into Lily's eyes when she mentioned it. Her friend smiled and stood up again, coming to stand beside Marlene as they made their way down to the Great Hall for lunch.

"He's getting tormented enough as it is. I think it's rubbing off on him. I'm worried, but I don't want him knowing that, and we don't need the whole school picking on him, either. Sev gets it bad enough at home," Lily said as they entered the Hall and she had to shout in order to be heard.

Marlene listened in somewhat stunned silence. She could hardly believe it. Severus didn't seem like the kind of person one needed to worry about, and she hadn't known Lily to get this worried over anyone else besides her family.

"I won't tell anyone about that, either," Marlene called after her friend as they headed towards their separate tables.

Lily shot her a smile over her shoulder and took off towards the other end of the room, where the Gryffindor table was almost bouncing off the walls. Or, it would've been, if its inhabitants had figured out how to do such a thing.


	2. Chapter 2

"I met Sirius," Marlene told Lily one night while they were studying together. The room had gotten fairly empty and the ticking of the nearby clock had signaled to them that it was well past midnight, but for the first time, Marlene didn't mind not going to bed. She'd always felt that the night had a sort of magic that she couldn't comprehend for things of this sort, so she wanted to revel in it as much as possible. The things that she'd say to her friend now were things that would stay afloat between them until the morning sun rose, and then neither of them would mention anything again until they were in close quarters or the sun had dipped below the horizon once more. She liked that idea of midnight safety. So many good things could come of it.

Lily stopped writing and looked up. She'd gotten bangs in the last week, something that had started to become fashionable with the girls at Hogwarts, and her new haircut flopped over her forehead and into her eyes. Marlene thought Lily was one of the few people this look suited, although it seemed like having bangs in your eyes all the time would be a pain. "Oh? How did that happen?" she asked. Her eyebrows lowered together with worry.

Marlene shrugged and dipped her quill again. She spoke as she scraped away the excess ink. "It just kind of happened. He was walking one way and someone hit my shoulder. He helped me pick up my books."

Lily gave her a look that simultaneously ridiculed and berated her. "You dropped your books so that he would help you pick them up?" she asked.

Marlene gave her a look right back—one that said "are you kidding me?" "No, Lil, I didn't drop my books on purpose. It was only two books, anyway. He just bent down and gave them back to me when he was passing."

Lily nodded, chewing on her lip and studying her friend's face. "And how do you know it was him?" she asked.

Marlene shrugged. "I know Potter. He was definitely with him. They're inseparable, you know that," she said.

Lily nodded again and rolled her eyes. Marlene could hear her foot tapping under the table and wondered if that was her way of getting annoyed with the subject. She tried to talk quicker.

"I heard Ja—Potter calling out to him and he went running to catch up. That was it," she said.

Lily nodded and lifted one shoulder. "I guess you did, then. Congratulations. I've never met him, in all of my various run-ins with Potter." She thought about that a second and then started laughing. Marlene smiled at her. "Can you imagine?" she asked, and then started to shake her head. "He's so close with Sirius and I've never met Sirius at all."

Marlene smiled and watched her friend return to her paper. She wasn't sure what to say. Lily seemed as unenthused about this as she'd ever been, but Marlene thought it was something to talk about. She wanted to share this with her friend, and to have it be like the gossip that the rest of the girls in Hufflepuff talked about around the common room table.

I guess Lily isn't like that, she thought.

Marlene felt a slight rain cloud over her head for the rest of the next day. She'd wanted to have something interesting to share with her friend in the middle of the night and that hadn't happened as she'd thought it would. She'd thought Lily might ask all about him—what he looked like, how tall he was, did he say anything to her, did he even look at her face when he handed her stuff back? Those were the kinds of questions she was used to people asking her.

She could remember everything, too. They wouldn't have been hard for her to answer. Although, now that she tried to conjure up the image at breakfast, she couldn't seem to recall too much of it.

I guess there wasn't as much to it as I'd thought there was, she told herself.

"Hey Marlene," one of the girls farther down the table called.

Marlene snapped herself out of her thoughts and put down the bacon strip she'd been gnawing on. The girl handed her a giant stack of parchment over their plates.

"Watch out!" Marlene's neighbor, who sat directly between them, warned as she grabbed their tipping juice cups.

"Can you help me correct these?" the girl, Moira, asked. She had a small face and bright eyes that looked even brighter with being frazzled, and Marlene thought the girl looked as though her robes were slightly askew. "I'm supposed to be aiding one of the professors, but he had so much work to do that he just tossed it all over to me."

Marlene nodded and glanced at the first page of the stack. A long list of Arithmancy numbers. She blinked at it, at the neat rows and small writing, before she shook her head and handed the pile back. "Moira, I don't think I can help you with these. I'm not even close to being a sixth year," she said, a look of apology on her face.

Moira glanced over at her and her mouth dropped open. "Oh, no! Please, Marlene? I'd forgotten you weren't in my year," she said. Her hand went to her mouth and she started to gnaw on her fingernail.

Marlene laughed a little bit, but it didn't feel quite as full up with mirth as she would've liked it to sound. "I can try to help, but I don't think I'll be able to correct these. Are they all Arithmancy?" she asked.

Moira's jaw clicked closed. "No, they're not! That's right! I can grade the Arithmancy ones if you can grade the regular papers."

Marlene nodded, but she still didn't think she'd be much help. Sure, she felt for her friend, but she didn't think she was qualified to say which of the students was right about things she knew nothing about. She glanced over at the Gryffindor table while she was working and saw Lily laughing between two of her friends. They had their backs to her, but Lily caught Marlene's eye anyway and waved at her. Marlene waved back with a grin and turned back to her work. It was nice to be acknowledged by a Gryffindor, and to have one as a friend.

_Dear Mum,_

_Classes are getting harder. I know that's the thing you're most concerned about right now, so I just thought I'd get it out of the way. I think I'm going to start going for extra help afterwards. I know I'm a third year and I'm supposed to be getting really good at this stuff, but I don't know if they're just going too fast for me right now. I'll ask around—I know that's what you'd tell me to do if you were here with me._

_Lily is good. No, I haven't met any boys I like yet. I don't think that's something I'm going to be finding just yet, but you'll know when I do, and I don't think you ought to be worried about it right now. I promise, you'll be the first person I tell._

_I don't have all that much to say for the moment, except thank you for the cookies and for the blankets. I've been missing home for some reason and it's really nice to have one of your old throws to put at the end of my bed._

_Moira says hi. She says she loves the cookies, too, and she's sitting right next to me, reading me write this as she does her school work, so I think it's only fair that she gets a chance to have her say. Also, she's going to tell me what to write and she wants me to write it, just so that I get it right when it comes down to what I'm going to tell you about her. She's smiling as she reads this and says that sounds good and that she would like to see the family for Christmas, if that's something we can arrange. Maybe we could talk to dad? I don't think he minds. He rather likes Moira—didn't you say he thought she was funny?_

_Moira read that and laughed!_

_I'm going to go work on more things. Maybe Moira can help. She's a very good student._

_Please let me know how things are going. I know you're worried, what with the turmoil bubbling outside in the "real world" right now._

_I love you,_

_Marlene_

The Daily Prophet worried Marlene. She glanced at the headlines over Moira's shoulder as her friend read them that afternoon in the Great Hall between sips of water and bites of sandwich. Marlene leaned over and tapped Moira on the shoulder.

"Could I see that after you?" she asked in a low voice, nodding to the paper.

Moira nodded. "Yeah, sure!"

Marlene smiled her thanks, but she kept reading over Moira's shoulder. There had been an attack—a big one—by the Death Eaters, according to the writer. Marlene hadn't heard too much about these radicals, but her dad had talked a lot about them over the table, and every time he did, she thought his face got grayer and grayer. This was the first time she'd seen them making the front page of the paper, though, and that's what scared her.

"I thought they were just fanatics," she said in a low voice when Moira finally gave her the article.

Her friend shook her head, a deep frown on her face. "No, these people are the real deal," she said, and tapped the page before turning back to her plate. "They're getting into the Ministry and everything. Or, they tried to."

Marlene's jaw dropped and Moira nodded. "How did they do that?" she asked, her eyes scanning the article. She knew all the details would be revealed somewhere in the paper, but she couldn't stop herself from asking. "What were they looking for?" she asked.

Moira shrugged. "I'm not sure. I think they were just trying to prove that they could?"

Marlene frowned and scanned the article, thinking about what her friend had said as she tried to find the true source of the break-in. "That doesn't make sense. If you're a radical group, you wouldn't just break into a building to show that you could. That's something stupid Muggle teenagers do when they're trying to make a point—or be a herd of assholes."

Moira didn't respond. According to the article, a few of the Ministry officials had been involved, and they'd been the ones to do the infiltrating. When they'd gotten caught, it became known that the Death Eaters were the ones they were working with and gotten fired immediately.

So not too bad, Marlene tried to reason with herself. They weren't able to break in like a bank robbery or something. They'd already been inside the building. They just got caught.

She nodded to herself, trying to make it seem less frightening than it really was, but her heart knew the truth. It fluttered like a trapped bird against her rib cage. If there were Death Eaters in the Ministry of Magic, then what was to stop them from taking over all of Britain, or the United Kingdom itself? Sure, they'd gotten fired, but that was dangerous. They weren't supposed to be in the seats of the topmost officials. They'd know things and could help their leader—but Marlene was lost on the wizard's name.

For once, she was glad she was at Hogwarts when something exciting was happening in the outside world. Still, she wished she could talk to her father about this. He'd have plenty to say, she knew.

Lily was as concerned with it as anyone, running into Marlene with a copy of the paper and a wide, frightened look on her face.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry it's taking so long! I'm writing original stuff also, which is very time consuming, so I'm not following much when it comes to the teachers who were around during the Marauder era. Please don't hold that against me too harshly. I know where this story is going, and I like it enough that I plan on going to the end, even if it'll be slow going.

Thanks!

"Have you seen what's in the papers?" Lily asked, waving her copy of the Daily Prophet at Marlene's face.

Marlene nodded and pushed her friend's hands away. "I've seen it. I read it at lunch. What do you think it means?" she asked.

They heard laughter coming from down the hall and Lily blanched. Marlene looked over her shoulder and saw a group of Slytherins coming towards them. She ducked her head towards the floor as they walked past, but saw that Lily didn't look away. She just glared at the lot of them and her gaze seemed to dare them to stare back at her. When they passed, Marlene looked up, her face red.

"I think it means that we're no longer safe," Lily said in a terse voice.

Marlene nodded after the kids they'd been hiding from. "Do you think they know?"

Her friend shrugged. "I'm not sure. I'm pretty certain they're not talking about that, though. I mean, you'd have to be pretty bold to be agreeing with this guy—this Voldemort—in public, and in Hogwarts of all places. I don't think they're that brazen."

Marlene nodded. She stared at the picture on the cover of Lily's newspaper and watched with unseeing eyes as the figures on it moved about, talking or doing whatever it was the camera had caught them in the middle of. It didn't seem real. It felt too far away to be happening to her and she didn't know if she liked that.

Classes resumed as usual. She thought some of the other kids were more subdued with the news of the break-in, but a lot of them were talking in loud voices about what this would mean. Connor MacMillan spoke the loudest, and from the other end of the room, of all places. Marlene could hear him in potions and she wondered what the teacher would say when he heard.

Professor Slughorn walked into the room with a swirl of his coat and told them all to quiet down.

"Did you hear, Professor?" Connor asked from his corner. He had the newspaper upraised so that Slughorn could see it.

Marlene watched their professor look up, nod once, and then return to his desk with his attention.

"What part about it do you have questions on?" Slughorn asked in a somewhat bored voice.

Marlene was amazed. She couldn't believe how lightly he was taking this. She looked around the room to see if anyone else was as taken aback by his tone, but everyone either had their heads to their desks or were staring at him with open challenges on their faces. She didn't know if they were curious to hear what he had to say, or if they just wanted to get him to talk. Marlene raised her hand.

Slughorn nodded at her. "Miss McKinnon?"

"What does this mean for us now?" Marlene asked in a soft voice.

"The break-in, I take it you're referring to?" Slughorn asked. Marlene nodded and her professor settled himself behind his desk into his chair with a sigh. She thought she could hear the creaking of everyone's chairs as they leaned forward, but that might very well have just been her own. "This means that the people we thought we could trust aren't the people we believed them to be."

"So you believe it, then?" Connor asked in the same loud voice as before. Marlene looked over at him and saw that he'd also bent himself across his desk to better get involved. "You believe that the people inside the Ministry of Magic were involved in this and that they helped get this guy—this Voldemort—in?"

Slughorn winced and waved his hand at Connor. "Please don't say his name. But yes, I believe that there are certain people in power who have helped him do what he did. I think it's going to take a lot for us to learn to trust our superiors once again, and that we are going to need to watch ourselves and our neighbors more carefully."

Marlene clenched her jaw and looked at her hands. _As if we needed any more reason to doubt one another_.

"Does that answer your question, Miss McKinnon?"

Marlene looked up again to see Slughorn staring at her in earnest. She nodded her head and he smiled, but only a little bit. She thought he looked distracted and she wondered if he even wanted to be in the room teaching right now. If she'd been in his place, she knew she wouldn't have wanted to be.

"How did they get in there?" Connor asked in the same loud voice. Marlene started to feel the budding of a small headache growing behind her eyebrows and she wished he wouldn't talk so loudly. His voice echoed off the walls and rattled against her eardrums.

"Did you read the paper, Mr. MacMillan?" Slughorn asked with a tone of impatience to his voice. Marlene looked up and saw his blatant irritation written on his face. She wondered what had prompted it, but whatever it was, she didn't want to be caught in the crossfire.

Everyone else seemed to get that impression, too. A lot of bodies sat back in their chairs and a lot of hands folded themselves on top of the desks. Curiosity leaked from the room and replaced itself with compliance and the need to sit very still.

"I asked if you'd read the paper, Mr. MacMillan. It would be kind of you to answer," Slughorn repeated. The tone of irritation in his voice got more pronounced. Marlene blushed as she looked at her desk. She suddenly didn't want to be sitting so close to the front of the room.

"Y-yes, I did," Connor said. His voice didn't lose its volume, but it lost most of its demand for attention.

From the corner of her eye, Marlene could see Slughorn nodding. "Good. Then you'll know precisely what happened. I'm a professor, Mr. MacMillan. Not an Auror and not a Death Eater, as these radicals call themselves. I wasn't there and nor do I ever intend to be. If you want the details of the situation, I suggest you go to the source. Unfortunately, even if you did, I'm sure they wouldn't want to disclose such sensitive information to the likes of a third-year at Hogwarts."

Marlene felt her cheeks growing hot. She wondered if the room had gotten closer or if that was just her. Her seat partner had her her head bowed, too, but she didn't dare risk glancing over at her friend. She didn't want Slughorn to her seen trading loos with other people while he was angry. It made her think he'd believe she was trying to see if anyone else thought he was losing it, too, and the last thing she wanted was for him to be mad at her for something stupid like that.

"Now, we don't have any more time to be wasted in discussing this nonsense. You can't believe everything the papers tell you. Most of them are designed just to sell. No, instead, we need to prepare you for the things that are really important—the kinds of spells you'll be working on in order to get out of here and into the real world."

For the next hour, they worked tirelessly on making potions that Marlene was sure only a fifth-year would be able to complete. By the end of the day, she was so hot and tired that she could feel the sweat on her back and chest gluing her shirt to her skin and was no longer sure of whether she was putting together the right ingredients to make an increase of strong will potion or not. She didn't really care by the end of the class period.

Neither, it would seem, did Slughorn. He sat at his desk and stared at the papers he'd collected there in giant piles. His eyes didn't look up once while he was working and when the hour was finally up, they had to remind him that class had ended before he realized what time it was.

"All right, well, clean up and get a move on. Don't want to be late for your next classes," he said, standing up and taking off his glasses as he came to stand in front of his desk.

Marlene was putting her stuff away and praying that nobody would ask him about homework when her seating partner's friend, Lucy, asked just that. The whole room groaned, Marlene among them.

Slughorn blinked at her and then nodded. "Oh yes, I almost forgot! For homework, one foot of parchment on the importance of the potion we brewed today—why does one need strong will and why would anyone ever brew it?"

"Thanks a lot, Lucy," Marlene heard Connor mutter under his breath as he walked out of the room. His hooded eyes were dark and he knocked her shoulder with his as he passed. Lucy blushed and slung her bag over her shoulder. Marlene tried to smile at her, but Lucy's head was ducked, so she couldn't see Marlene and kept walking.

"What a jerk," Marlene's seating partner muttered as they were leaving the room.

"Connor has a chip on his shoulder," Marlene said.

"No, not him. Slughorn. What a complete and absolute jerk. He asks us to give him questions about this and as soon as he gets them, he snaps at us for asking. What the hell? He's not supposed to get mad like that. He's a teacher—he should want to answer our questions, or at least promote our asking them instead of yelling at us and smacking us down for trying to get our answers."

"Yeah, that was pretty rude," Marlene said, her thoughts somewhere else. She didn't want to think about Slughorn. She didn't want to have that in her mind for the whole day. He was one of her favorite teachers and just thinking about him being angry made her want to go back to the common room and sit there for a while, or at least until he forgot that their class had been the one to offend him.

She and her seating partner walked for a short ways together before she parted with her friend at the junction of the Great Hall and the stairs. While her seating partner went to go work, Marlene went into her common room, sneaking down past the kitchens towards the barrels that hid the Hufflepuff House dorms.

Everything inside was warm and cozy. Earth toned furniture, hanging plants, and golden sunlight permeated every corner of the room, even though they were placed well below the rest of the building. The fire crackling int he stove gave everything a woody smell and the flowers decorating the small windows gave pops of color to the otherwise darkened room. A few first-years were playing cards together when she walked in and they waved at her before she disappeared into the girl's side of the dorms. In here, blacks and golds dominated the bedding and furniture. The wood had been polished so that the ebony hues had the sleek shine of newly cut onyx and the golds of their bedding seemed to glow int he light.

Marlene settled her stuff on her bed at the far corner of the room, and lay back on it for a while. She wanted to stay in here for a long time.

You have classes, her thoughts reminded her.

With a groan, she sat up and stuffed her Potions books into the trunk at the end of her bed. She grabbed up Transfiguration work and stumbled back out into the hallway, huffing her breath as she hurried out towards the other end of the building.

Stopping like that was a mistake, she told herself as she burst into the classroom a few seconds too late and wound up sliding into an empty seat at the back. The professor's eyebrows shot to her hairline, but Marlene had already settled her stuff on top of her desk and started copying the notes that were scribbled on the board.

"You're never this late," the professor said when she walked by to check her work.

Marlene nodded to her desk. "I've had a strange morning, but I'm putting it aside," she said in a low voice.

The professor nodded, stood back up, and started to walk away. "Thank you for your consideration in sitting back here instead of up front."

Marlene nodded at the desk and kept her eyes on her quill. We're not doing that again, she told herself, thinking of her sojourn to her bedroom.

The class period wasn't nearly as exciting or embarrassing as Slughorn's had been. She was glad for this—she couldn't think of anything more upsetting than having to go through another session with her professors like that. Nobody asked any questions or made any comments and Marlene wondered if all of Connor's professors were having as much of a hard time as Slughorn had been given. She wondered if the rest of them had gotten as annoyed.

She went to Defense Against the Dark Arts afterwards, which only proved to be more of the same as Potions, but without nearly as much hassel. Marlene thought Connor would've liked it there, but didn't get a chance to see him, so she had to settle with the hope that he was getting his information somewhere else.

As she was leaving, Marlene gasped. "I forgot my homework on my desk," she told Moira, who was standing beside her and stuffing papers into her bag. "I'll be right back. Save me a place at the table," she said, and disappeared back down the hall.

When she got to the door, she heard voices inside. Stopping in the hall, Marlene listened, trying to figure out who was talking to whom.

It sounded like Slughorn was there.

"I don't know what to make of this," he was saying to the professor. "I'm terrified. What if he finds out where I work? If this is the same kid I had growing up, then he could come back here and try to get me."

Marlene heard her professor laugh. "If that's the case, then we'd all be in trouble. I'm pretty sure that everyone at this school has had the boy for a class or two. If it's really the boy you think he is, then we're all in trouble. I'm sure it's nothing, Horace. I'm sure it's all just a big scare."

Marlene swallowed and started walking back down the hall as she heard their footsteps getting closer to the door. When it opened, she'd hidden herself down another hall and stopped to pretend to check something in her bag. The professors were still muttering between themselves, but they were going the other way, so Marlene came out and started down the hall after them towards the Great Hall. When they went up the stairs, she booked it towards the Hufflepuff table.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry it's taking so long! I'll try to post more often, and have shorter chapters.

"Have you seen what's in the papers?" Lily asked, waving her copy of the Daily Prophet at Marlene's face.

Marlene nodded and pushed her friend's hands away. "I've seen it. I read it at lunch. What do you think it means?" she asked.

They heard laughter coming from down the hall and Lily blanched. Marlene looked over her shoulder and saw a group of Slytherins coming towards them. She ducked her head towards the floor as they walked past, but saw that Lily didn't look away. She just glared at the lot of them and her gaze seemed to dare them to stare back at her. When they passed, Marlene looked up, her face red.

"I think it means that we're no longer safe," Lily said in a terse voice.

Marlene nodded after the kids they'd been hiding from. "Do you think they know?"

Her friend shrugged. "I'm not sure. I'm pretty certain they're not talking about that, though. I mean, you'd have to be pretty bold to be agreeing with this guy—this Voldemort—in public, and in Hogwarts of all places. I don't think they're that brazen."

Marlene nodded. She stared at the picture on the cover of Lily's newspaper and watched with unseeing eyes as the figures on it moved about, talking or doing whatever it was the camera had caught them in the middle of. It didn't seem real. It felt too far away to be happening to her and she didn't know if she liked that.

Classes resumed as usual. She thought some of the other kids were more subdued with the news of the break-in, but a lot of them were talking in loud voices about what this would mean. Connor MacMillan spoke the loudest, and from the other end of the room, of all places. Marlene could hear him in potions and she wondered what the teacher would say when he heard.

Professor Slughorn walked into the room with a swirl of his coat and told them all to quiet down.

"Did you hear, Professor?" Connor asked from his corner. He had the newspaper upraised so that Slughorn could see it.

Marlene watched their professor look up, nod once, and then return to his desk with his attention.

"What part about it do you have questions on?" Slughorn asked in a somewhat bored voice.

Marlene was amazed. She couldn't believe how lightly he was taking this. She looked around the room to see if anyone else was as taken aback by his tone, but everyone either had their heads to their desks or were staring at him with open challenges on their faces. She didn't know if they were curious to hear what he had to say, or if they just wanted to get him to talk. Marlene raised her hand.

Slughorn nodded at her. "Miss McKinnon?"

"What does this mean for us now?" Marlene asked in a soft voice.

"The break-in, I take it you're referring to?" Slughorn asked. Marlene nodded and her professor settled himself behind his desk into his chair with a sigh. She thought she could hear the creaking of everyone's chairs as they leaned forward, but that might very well have just been her own. "This means that the people we thought we could trust aren't the people we believed them to be."

"So you believe it, then?" Connor asked in the same loud voice as before. Marlene looked over at him and saw that he'd also bent himself across his desk to better get involved. "You believe that the people inside the Ministry of Magic were involved in this and that they helped get this guy—this Voldemort—in?"

Slughorn winced and waved his hand at Connor. "Please don't say his name. But yes, I believe that there are certain people in power who have helped him do what he did. I think it's going to take a lot for us to learn to trust our superiors once again, and that we are going to need to watch ourselves and our neighbors more carefully."

Marlene clenched her jaw and looked at her hands. _As if we needed any more reason to doubt one another_.

"Does that answer your question, Miss McKinnon?"

Marlene looked up again to see Slughorn staring at her in earnest. She nodded her head and he smiled, but only a little bit. She thought he looked distracted and she wondered if he even wanted to be in the room teaching right now. If she'd been in his place, she knew she wouldn't have wanted to be.

"How did they get in there?" Connor asked in the same loud voice. Marlene started to feel the budding of a small headache growing behind her eyebrows and she wished he wouldn't talk so loudly. His voice echoed off the walls and rattled against her eardrums.

"Did you read the paper, Mr. MacMillan?" Slughorn asked with a tone of impatience to his voice. Marlene looked up and saw his blatant irritation written on his face. She wondered what had prompted it, but whatever it was, she didn't want to be caught in the crossfire.

Everyone else seemed to get that impression, too. A lot of bodies sat back in their chairs and a lot of hands folded themselves on top of the desks. Curiosity leaked from the room and replaced itself with compliance and the need to sit very still.

"I asked if you'd read the paper, Mr. MacMillan. It would be kind of you to answer," Slughorn repeated. The tone of irritation in his voice got more pronounced. Marlene blushed as she looked at her desk. She suddenly didn't want to be sitting so close to the front of the room.

"Y-yes, I did," Connor said. His voice didn't lose its volume, but it lost most of its demand for attention.

From the corner of her eye, Marlene could see Slughorn nodding. "Good. Then you'll know precisely what happened. I'm a professor, Mr. MacMillan. Not an Auror and not a Death Eater, as these radicals call themselves. I wasn't there and nor do I ever intend to be. If you want the details of the situation, I suggest you go to the source. Unfortunately, even if you did, I'm sure they wouldn't want to disclose such sensitive information to the likes of a third-year at Hogwarts."

Marlene felt her cheeks growing hot. She wondered if the room had gotten closer or if that was just her. Her seat partner had her her head bowed, too, but she didn't dare risk glancing over at her friend. She didn't want Slughorn to her seen trading loos with other people while he was angry. It made her think he'd believe she was trying to see if anyone else thought he was losing it, too, and the last thing she wanted was for him to be mad at her for something stupid like that.

"Now, we don't have any more time to be wasted in discussing this nonsense. You can't believe everything the papers tell you. Most of them are designed just to sell. No, instead, we need to prepare you for the things that are really important—the kinds of spells you'll be working on in order to get out of here and into the real world."

For the next hour, they worked tirelessly on making potions that Marlene was sure only a fifth-year would be able to complete. By the end of the day, she was so hot and tired that she could feel the sweat on her back and chest gluing her shirt to her skin and was no longer sure of whether she was putting together the right ingredients to make an increase of strong will potion or not. She didn't really care by the end of the class period.

Neither, it would seem, did Slughorn. He sat at his desk and stared at the papers he'd collected there in giant piles. His eyes didn't look up once while he was working and when the hour was finally up, they had to remind him that class had ended before he realized what time it was.

"All right, well, clean up and get a move on. Don't want to be late for your next classes," he said, standing up and taking off his glasses as he came to stand in front of his desk.

Marlene was putting her stuff away and praying that nobody would ask him about homework when her seating partner's friend, Lucy, asked just that. The whole room groaned, Marlene among them.

Slughorn blinked at her and then nodded. "Oh yes, I almost forgot! For homework, one foot of parchment on the importance of the potion we brewed today—why does one need strong will and why would anyone ever brew it?"

"Thanks a lot, Lucy," Marlene heard Connor mutter under his breath as he walked out of the room. His hooded eyes were dark and he knocked her shoulder with his as he passed. Lucy blushed and slung her bag over her shoulder. Marlene tried to smile at her, but Lucy's head was ducked, so she couldn't see Marlene and kept walking.

"What a jerk," Marlene's seating partner muttered as they were leaving the room.

"Connor has a chip on his shoulder," Marlene said.

"No, not him. Slughorn. What a complete and absolute jerk. He asks us to give him questions about this and as soon as he gets them, he snaps at us for asking. What the hell? He's not supposed to get mad like that. He's a teacher—he should want to answer our questions, or at least promote our asking them instead of yelling at us and smacking us down for trying to get our answers."

"Yeah, that was pretty rude," Marlene said, her thoughts somewhere else. She didn't want to think about Slughorn. She didn't want to have that in her mind for the whole day. He was one of her favorite teachers and just thinking about him being angry made her want to go back to the common room and sit there for a while, or at least until he forgot that their class had been the one to offend him.

She and her seating partner walked for a short ways together before she parted with her friend at the junction of the Great Hall and the stairs. While her seating partner went to go work, Marlene went into her common room, sneaking down past the kitchens towards the barrels that hid the Hufflepuff House dorms.

Everything inside was warm and cozy. Earth toned furniture, hanging plants, and golden sunlight permeated every corner of the room, even though they were placed well below the rest of the building. The fire crackling int he stove gave everything a woody smell and the flowers decorating the small windows gave pops of color to the otherwise darkened room. A few first-years were playing cards together when she walked in and they waved at her before she disappeared into the girl's side of the dorms. In here, blacks and golds dominated the bedding and furniture. The wood had been polished so that the ebony hues had the sleek shine of newly cut onyx and the golds of their bedding seemed to glow int he light.

Marlene settled her stuff on her bed at the far corner of the room, and lay back on it for a while. She wanted to stay in here for a long time.

You have classes, her thoughts reminded her.

With a groan, she sat up and stuffed her Potions books into the trunk at the end of her bed. She grabbed up Transfiguration work and stumbled back out into the hallway, huffing her breath as she hurried out towards the other end of the building.

Stopping like that was a mistake, she told herself as she burst into the classroom a few seconds too late and wound up sliding into an empty seat at the back. The professor's eyebrows shot to her hairline, but Marlene had already settled her stuff on top of her desk and started copying the notes that were scribbled on the board.

"You're never this late," the professor said when she walked by to check her work.

Marlene nodded to her desk. "I've had a strange morning, but I'm putting it aside," she said in a low voice.

The professor nodded, stood back up, and started to walk away. "Thank you for your consideration in sitting back here instead of up front."

Marlene nodded at the desk and kept her eyes on her quill. We're not doing that again, she told herself, thinking of her sojourn to her bedroom.

The class period wasn't nearly as exciting or embarrassing as Slughorn's had been. She was glad for this—she couldn't think of anything more upsetting than having to go through another session with her professors like that. Nobody asked any questions or made any comments and Marlene wondered if all of Connor's professors were having as much of a hard time as Slughorn had been given. She wondered if the rest of them had gotten as annoyed.

She went to Defense Against the Dark Arts afterwards, which only proved to be more of the same as Potions, but without nearly as much hassel. Marlene thought Connor would've liked it there, but didn't get a chance to see him, so she had to settle with the hope that he was getting his information somewhere else.

As she was leaving, Marlene gasped. "I forgot my homework on my desk," she told Moira, who was standing beside her and stuffing papers into her bag. "I'll be right back. Save me a place at the table," she said, and disappeared back down the hall.

When she got to the door, she heard voices inside. Stopping in the hall, Marlene listened, trying to figure out who was talking to whom.

It sounded like Slughorn was there.

"I don't know what to make of this," he was saying to the professor. "I'm terrified. What if he finds out where I work? If this is the same kid I had growing up, then he could come back here and try to get me."

Marlene heard her professor laugh. "If that's the case, then we'd all be in trouble. I'm pretty sure that everyone at this school has had the boy for a class or two. If it's really the boy you think he is, then we're all in trouble. I'm sure it's nothing, Horace. I'm sure it's all just a big scare."

Marlene swallowed and started walking back down the hall as she heard their footsteps getting closer to the door. When it opened, she'd hidden herself down another hall and stopped to pretend to check something in her bag. The professors were still muttering between themselves, but they were going the other way, so Marlene came out and started down the hall after them towards the Great Hall. When they went up the stairs, she booked it towards the Hufflepuff table.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Again, I apologize for the infrequent updates. I'm still chipping away at the story. Thank you for the comments thus far!

"What's the matter, Marlene?" her roommate, Greta, asked when Marlene took her place beside her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

A couple of girls farther down the table giggled and Marlene gave her friend a weak smile. "Not quite," she said and settled down. She didn't think she ought to tell anybody about what she'd heard. It didn't seem to change much, but she thought it might be important—and if it was, she didn't want her friends idly running around with it in their back pockets when someone who knew what they were doing were better equipped to do something about it instead.

She thought about writing to her father, but she didn't know if this was something he'd prefer to talk to her about in person.

It irked her for most of the day, until something more pressing made itself available for notice. Severus was talking to Lily in a private corner of the hallway.

Marlene felt her heart drop inside her chest, but she snuck behind one of the giant stone pillars indenting the hallway and watched them talking with one eye hidden behind the wall. She could see her friend smiling and could only see the back of Severus's head as he nodded to her. It wasn't enough to tell her what was going on, but she knew Lily's face well enough to know that her friend's smile wasn't genuine. Whatever it was that was going on between them, she wasn't actually happy about it.

"What are we doing?" someone asked close to Marlene's ear.

Marlene jumped and swung her arms out and around. She hit a tall boy with messy black hair and a nice-looking face, who grabbed at his side where she hit him and hissed through his teeth.

"Oh, Merlin! I'm so sorry!" she said, covering her mouth with her hand.

The boy nodded and waved at her. "It's okay—I'll be fine. It's just a flesh wound!" he said, but he stayed doubled over around the spot where she'd hit him on his side.

Marlene watched as he leaned against the wall, putting his head back and closing his eyes as though he were in a great deal of pain. When she saw the smile creeping across his cheeks, her gaping mouth snapped shut and she let her hands fall to her sides.

"You're faking," she said in a flat voice.

The boy laughed, a sound that threatened to echo across the hallway and alert Lily and Severus to their presences. Marlene blanched and glanced around her shoulder, eyes wide as she tried to see what was happening with her friend.

"Yep, you got me," the boy laughed. "You're not a very strong punch, anyway. You need to use more of your arm and less of your hand. The hand is just a device—a tool, if you will. The real power is in the thrust."

Marlene looked over her shoulder to stare at him. The boy had leaned back against the wall again, his foot braced behind him, but this time he had his hands gripping his lapels and a sly grin on his face. "Excuse me?" she asked. The hallway had gotten a bit more crowded, so she was pretty sure that neither Lily nor Severus had heard them talking. They certainly hadn't moved from where they were standing and neither of them looked to be going away anytime soon, but that thought was tempered by the fact that she couldn't hear what was going on. She could only base her thoughts off of what she saw happening on Lily's face.

It didn't look good.

"Can I ask what you're doing here?" Marlene said, keeping her eyes on the boy standing behind her.

His eyebrows quirked. "You can. That doesn't mean much, though," he said and folded his arms across his chest. "I prefer to keep an air of mystery about myself."

Marlene didn't move. "Are you being ridiculous on purpose?" she asked.

The boy's expression didn't fade. His eyes looked her up and down for a long time before Marlene blushed and hid herself against the wall again, peering around the side to see what her friend was doing. Lily had gone, though. Marlene felt her heart dropping in her chest and she glanced around a couple of times, trying to pinpoint faces in the crowd, but all to no avail. Wherever her friend had gone, she'd managed to go without Marlene knowing it.

"What's your name?"

Marlene looked over her shoulder. The boy hadn't moved, but the smile had slipped from his face. The newly serious expression made the circles under his eyes seem darker and more pronounced, and there was a fresh heaviness about his face. She wondered how she hadn't seen it before, and what could've possibly been his secret to making it disappear. "My name?" she asked.

He nodded, looking at her from the corner of his darkly rimmed eyes.

"Marlene. What's yours?"

"Marlene what?"

"Marlene McKinnon."

"You're a Hufflepuff?" he asked, nodding to the badge on the front of her robes.

She glanced down at herself and nodded. "How about you?" she asked.

That smile appeared back on his face again and he leaned his head back against the wall. "I'm a Gryffindor," he said, pushing his chest out. If Marlene hadn't known any better, she would've said the badge next to his arm was shining with pride.

"I would've guessed a Slytherin," Marlene said, even though she couldn't miss it with the colors he was wearing.

The boy deflated. His back fell against the wall and his eyes opened wide as all of the fight seemed to fly out of him. He looked over at her. "Are you serious?"

"Are you?" she asked.

"I am. Sirius Black. Nice to meet you, Miss Mar-lene Mc-Kinnon," he said, elongating her name as though he needed to pronounce every letter in order to say it properly.

Marlene smiled, a bit starstruck, even though she didn't want to admit it. "I knew it," she said in a low voice. The halls had gotten more crowded and it was getting difficult to hear him, so she wondered if she'd spoken too quietly for him to hear her. Sirius ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know. I'm something of a legend. It's kind of hard to miss me," he said, resting his head back against the wall. She wanted to point out to him that the way he'd run his hands through his hair hadn't done anything to make him look more attractive. Instead, he'd caused a few choice pieces to stick up around his face like a little boy who'd just woken up from a long nap. She bit her lip to stop herself from giggling.

"I have to go to class," she told him, throwing her bag over her shoulder and walking off in the opposite direction of where she'd seen Lily and Severus standing. "It was nice to meet you, Sirius."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Sirius saluting her. "And you, Miss McKinnon," he called. By that time, she could barely hear him, having walked far enough down the hall that the noise of the crowd had broken up his words.

Part of her couldn't wait to tell Lily about this. The other part of her wondered if that was such a good idea.

"I can't believe Severus sometimes," Lily said in a low, murderous voice. They were standing together in Herbology with potted plants standing all around them, the fronds of some of their leaves tickling their faces, and a series of seemingly impossible tasks set out before them. Marlene was busy taming a carnivorous plant and was only listening to her friend out of one ear while she tried to concentrate on what Sprout had been saying with the other Half of the class was busy wrestling their plants to the ground, but Lily had managed to tame hers in a matter of minutes. Marlene wondered if the garden shears had had anything to do with it.

"What did he say?" Marlene asked through clenched teeth. She glanced over at her friend, but Lily wasn't looking at her, so she felt no remorse in not paying her friend as much attention.

"It's not what he said, Marlene. It's what he did. Him and the rest of his motley crew," Lily said. She practically spat the words.

"Okay, so what did he do?" Marlene asked. She tried to keep the impatience out of her voice, but she was trying so hard to pay attention to both her friend and her assignment that she wasn't listening to Lily and she wasn't stopping her plant.

"Oh, Merlin—do you want me to do that?"

Marlene looked up and saw the Lily was staring at her plant. It was currently battling Marlene for the opportunity to bite her finger and Marlene was in sweats trying to keep it at bay. "No, I got it. You keep talking."

Lily watched her friend for a moment longer and then nodded. Marlene had managed to get the plant to hold onto the end of the shears while she administered its tranquilizers and relaxed the plant completely.

"He's busy consorting with his other stupid Slytherin friends. They're all excited about this whole Voldemort business. I don't know why—I don't know what this guy can offer him that other people aren't—but I've never seen him more excited. I don't think he even knows what this guy's business is. I don't think he knows what he stands for or anything. I'm pretty sure he's just going in blind."

Marlene huffed and puffed as she slid the sleeping plant away from her. Its mouth was rimmed with red from the tranquilizing powder, but it was knocked out and snoring, so she felt she'd done her job. Sitting back in her seat, she glanced around to see how her neighbors were doing and felt somewhat accomplished when she saw that she'd been one of the few to manage without assistance. The rest of the class seemed to be in tears, given up, or was asking for help. Lily was the only one who didn't seem to be the least bit concerned with what she'd accomplished. "You're scared for him," Marlene said.

Lily laughed, but it wasn't full of mirth. Hers was a bitter, disgusted sound. "I know I shouldn't be. What gives him the right to be treating people like this? What gives him the right to make me worry and still be expected to care about him? Why should I care?"

"He's been your friend for a long time," Marlene said. She pulled off her gloves and put them on the table next to her shears. "I think that would earn you some respect. He ought to have some consideration for what you're giving him. If you're going to have the heart to get worried about what he's doing, he ought to have the kindness to stop your need to worry."

Lily shook her head. Her face had gone pink and the rims of her eyes were red. Marlene wondered if she was about to cry and if they ought to leave the room, but her friend didn't seem intent on going anywhere. "I don't think any of this would've happened if he'd gotten into Gryffindor. I think it's something based on Slytherin. I think that's what's got him so up in arms. He wants to do something for his house or something. It's all pride. It's all stupid boy pride, I know it is."

Marlene patted her arm and wished she could say something more comforting, but by the time she thought of anything, Sprout had called them to attention and had them putting their stuff away. Lily was the first to finish and the first to leave. She didn't even wait for Marlene to catch up, even though her friend was scrambling to.

"Don't take it to heart," Moira said when she caught up to Marlene.

"You saw all that?" Marlene asked.

Moira nodded. "She's just distracted. My friends get that way, too. She'll come around."


	6. Chapter 6

Marlene ran into Sirius again when she was leaving DADA a few days after they learned about the students in the Daily Prophet. He was standing outside the door to the courtyard with a friend—whom she recognized to be James Potter—and was seemingly deep in thought when he turned around and caught her eye. Marlene smiled and ducked her head, but when she glanced over at him again, he was waving at her. She waved back until she saw Potter turn, and then she ran off, wanting to pull her hood over her head so that he wouldn't recognize her. She didn't want him to know he'd heard them talking.

"You think you know who's involved?" she thought—only thought—she heard Potter saying.

"I'm fairly certain of it, but there's nothing I can use that would prove me right," she thought—only thought—she heard Sirius reply. "I'm just waiting to find out, like the rest of us."

"Bet it's that Slytherin kid," Potter muttered. His voice had gotten louder in the cold, dead air, and with the silence of the courtyard to surround them, she couldn't help overhearing. Marlene walked faster, her cheeks growing warm. It felt good against the chill of the wind, but she still imagined they could see her blushing, and it pushed her to walk faster. She rounded the corner to her hallway just as she heard Sirius say in a low voice, "Nah, I don't think he's smart enough for that—"

"—Never suggested he was smart—"

"He said hi to me again," she told Moira when she got back into the common room.

Moira dropped her wand as her mouth opened in a wide "O." "Did he say anything else?" she asked in a whisper.

Marlene shook her head and reclined in the seat beside her friend by the fire. There were a few other Hufflepuffs in the room with them, but they were being quiet so that everyone could hear what everyone else was saying to one another. She smiled at the thought—there wasn't another house in the world, it seemed, where people were at least this courteous to one another. "It was just in passing. Besides, his friend James was there."

Moira had started levitating objects once again. Her wand bounced in the air and her eyes took on the same distracted look they'd had only a few days previous, when Marlene had run into the problems with Arithmancy. "The Potter boy?" she asked.

Marlene nodded. She let her head fall back against the seat. "The one Lily doesn't like. I don't think she likes Sirius all that much, either, but I've never asked. She's been too busy lately for that."

She watched Moira quirk her mouth in a smile and then lower her levitation spell. She picked up her quill and started jotting notes onto a piece of parchment. "How has she been?" Moira asked.

Marlene shrugged. "I haven't seen much of her. She's worried about her Slytherin friend, from what she's told me about things lately. Aside from that, it's like she's a stranger"

Moira made a thoughtful noise and then stopped. "Wait, did you say Slytherin friend? As in, there's a Gryffindor who's actually friends with a Slytherin?"

Marlene laughed. "I know, right? It's crazy to think, but it's true."

Moira turned around in her seat. "Her friend wasn't one of those students caught helping that man, was he?" she asked. Her face had lost all traces of humor and her mouth sat in a straight line.

Marlene shook her head. "I don't know. That's what she's scared of, though."

Moira turned back to her work and Marlene couldn't see her face anymore. She wondered what her friend was thinking, but the girl had gone back to writing on her paper and Marlene didn't have the opportunity to ask. She didn't want to interrupt her friend's thoughts.

The room had gotten quiet. Marlene watched a few students leaving and then a few more pass through, but mostly the room stayed empty of life. It made her wonder where everyone was, and she wondered what the other Houses were doing in light of the news. She knew the Gryffindors and Slytherins would be talking—they always were—but she couldn't begin to guess how the Ravenclaws were reacting to this.

"Just leave it be," her mother had told her in her most recent letter. "Whatever it is, it's dangerous and we can't know what's going to happen with it until we've seen how bad it can get."

Marlene thought about that as she lay in bed that night, the letter suspended over her face so that she could read it by the light of the small heater in the middle of the room. Sirius words swam in her head and she wondered if he really did know. What would that mean for the rest of them, if he—Snape—really was involved? Assuming that was even who they were talking about. She wondered if she ought to say something to Moira, but the whole time, Moira had been too distracted to pay much attention, and it made her doubt that she was even following the prophet all that closely.

She folded the letter back up and let it rest on her chest as she tried to fall asleep. Images of her dad and mom arguing bloomed to life in her head—he wasn't the kind to sit idly by while things were happening. If her mom had said something like that to him, he'd have said that, by the time they knew how bad it could get, everyone could be dead.

Her father liked extremes.

The professors wouldn't say anything, though. No one mentioned it during Potions after the first incident with Slughorn left everyone muttering about him being a prat and a no-good Slytherin (a lot of the Gryffindors had said amongst themselves that he was probably involved somehow, and that was why he didn't want to talk about it). DADA was constantly full of questions, but their professor stopped them by getting them so involved in their schoolwork that they didn't have much time for talking. Everyone was holding their breath. No one wanted to venture a guess as to what would happen until it finally did.

Jinxing, after all, was the worst kind of magic.


	7. Chapter 7

"What's the matter, Marlene?" her roommate, Greta, asked when Marlene took her place beside her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

A couple of girls farther down the table giggled and Marlene gave her friend a weak smile. "Not quite," she said and settled down. She didn't think she ought to tell anybody about what she'd heard. It didn't seem to change much, but she thought it might be important—and if it was, she didn't want her friends idly running around with it in their back pockets when someone who knew what they were doing were better equipped to do something about it instead.

She thought about writing to her father, but she didn't know if this was something he'd prefer to talk to her about in person.

It irked her for most of the day, until something more pressing made itself available for notice. Severus was talking to Lily in a private corner of the hallway.

Marlene felt her heart drop inside her chest, but she snuck behind one of the giant stone pillars indenting the hallway and watched them talking with one eye hidden behind the wall. She could see her friend smiling and could only see the back of Severus's head as he nodded to her. It wasn't enough to tell her what was going on, but she knew Lily's face well enough to know that her friend's smile wasn't genuine. Whatever it was that was going on between them, she wasn't actually happy about it.

"What are we doing?" someone asked close to Marlene's ear.

Marlene jumped and swung her arms out and around. She hit a tall boy with messy black hair and a nice-looking face, who grabbed at his side where she hit him and hissed through his teeth.

"Oh, Merlin! I'm so sorry!" she said, covering her mouth with her hand.

The boy nodded and waved at her. "It's okay—I'll be fine. It's just a flesh wound!" he said, but he stayed doubled over around the spot where she'd hit him on his side.

Marlene watched as he leaned against the wall, putting his head back and closing his eyes as though he were in a great deal of pain. When she saw the smile creeping across his cheeks, her gaping mouth snapped shut and she let her hands fall to her sides.

"You're faking," she said in a flat voice.

The boy laughed, a sound that threatened to echo across the hallway and alert Lily and Severus to their presences. Marlene blanched and glanced around her shoulder, eyes wide as she tried to see what was happening with her friend.

"Yep, you got me," the boy laughed. "You're not a very strong punch, anyway. You need to use more of your arm and less of your hand. The hand is just a device—a tool, if you will. The real power is in the thrust."

Marlene looked over her shoulder to stare at him. The boy had leaned back against the wall again, his foot braced behind him, but this time he had his hands gripping his lapels and a sly grin on his face. "Excuse me?" she asked. The hallway had gotten a bit more crowded, so she was pretty sure that neither Lily nor Severus had heard them talking. They certainly hadn't moved from where they were standing and neither of them looked to be going away anytime soon, but that thought was tempered by the fact that she couldn't hear what was going on. She could only base her thoughts off of what she saw happening on Lily's face.

It didn't look good.

"Can I ask what you're doing here?" Marlene said, keeping her eyes on the boy standing behind her.

His eyebrows quirked. "You can. That doesn't mean much, though," he said and folded his arms across his chest. "I prefer to keep an air of mystery about myself."

Marlene didn't move. "Are you being ridiculous on purpose?" she asked.

The boy's expression didn't fade. His eyes looked her up and down for a long time before Marlene blushed and hid herself against the wall again, peering around the side to see what her friend was doing. Lily had gone, though. Marlene felt her heart dropping in her chest and she glanced around a couple of times, trying to pinpoint faces in the crowd, but all to no avail. Wherever her friend had gone, she'd managed to go without Marlene knowing it.

"What's your name?"

Marlene looked over her shoulder. The boy hadn't moved, but the smile had slipped from his face. The newly serious expression made the circles under his eyes seem darker and more pronounced, and there was a fresh heaviness about his face. She wondered how she hadn't seen it before, and what could've possibly been his secret to making it disappear. "My name?" she asked.

He nodded, looking at her from the corner of his darkly rimmed eyes.

"Marlene. What's yours?"

"Marlene what?"

"Marlene McKinnon."

"You're a Hufflepuff?" he asked, nodding to the badge on the front of her robes.

She glanced down at herself and nodded. "How about you?" she asked.

That smile appeared back on his face again and he leaned his head back against the wall. "I'm a Gryffindor," he said, pushing his chest out. If Marlene hadn't known any better, she would've said the badge next to his arm was shining with pride.

"I would've guessed a Slytherin," Marlene said, even though she couldn't miss it with the colors he was wearing.

The boy deflated. His back fell against the wall and his eyes opened wide as all of the fight seemed to fly out of him. He looked over at her. "Are you serious?"

"Are you?" she asked.

"I am. Sirius Black. Nice to meet you, Miss Mar-lene Mc-Kinnon," he said, elongating her name as though he needed to pronounce every letter in order to say it properly.

Marlene smiled, a bit starstruck, even though she didn't want to admit it. "I knew it," she said in a low voice. The halls had gotten more crowded and it was getting difficult to hear him, so she wondered if she'd spoken too quietly for him to hear her. Sirius ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know. I'm something of a legend. It's kind of hard to miss me," he said, resting his head back against the wall. She wanted to point out to him that the way he'd run his hands through his hair hadn't done anything to make him look more attractive. Instead, he'd caused a few choice pieces to stick up around his face like a little boy who'd just woken up from a long nap. She bit her lip to stop herself from giggling.

"I have to go to class," she told him, throwing her bag over her shoulder and walking off in the opposite direction of where she'd seen Lily and Severus standing. "It was nice to meet you, Sirius."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Sirius saluting her. "And you, Miss McKinnon," he called. By that time, she could barely hear him, having walked far enough down the hall that the noise of the crowd had broken up his words.

Part of her couldn't wait to tell Lily about this. The other part of her wondered if that was such a good idea.

"I can't believe Severus sometimes," Lily said in a low, murderous voice. They were standing together in Herbology with potted plants standing all around them, the fronds of some of their leaves tickling their faces, and a series of seemingly impossible tasks set out before them. Marlene was busy taming a carnivorous plant and was only listening to her friend out of one ear while she tried to concentrate on what Sprout had been saying with the other Half of the class was busy wrestling their plants to the ground, but Lily had managed to tame hers in a matter of minutes. Marlene wondered if the garden shears had had anything to do with it.

"What did he say?" Marlene asked through clenched teeth. She glanced over at her friend, but Lily wasn't looking at her, so she felt no remorse in not paying her friend as much attention.

"It's not what he said, Marlene. It's what he did. Him and the rest of his motley crew," Lily said. She practically spat the words.

"Okay, so what did he do?" Marlene asked. She tried to keep the impatience out of her voice, but she was trying so hard to pay attention to both her friend and her assignment that she wasn't listening to Lily and she wasn't stopping her plant.

"Oh, Merlin—do you want me to do that?"

Marlene looked up and saw the Lily was staring at her plant. It was currently battling Marlene for the opportunity to bite her finger and Marlene was in sweats trying to keep it at bay. "No, I got it. You keep talking."

Lily watched her friend for a moment longer and then nodded. Marlene had managed to get the plant to hold onto the end of the shears while she administered its tranquilizers and relaxed the plant completely.

"He's busy consorting with his other stupid Slytherin friends. They're all excited about this whole Voldemort business. I don't know why—I don't know what this guy can offer him that other people aren't—but I've never seen him more excited. I don't think he even knows what this guy's business is. I don't think he knows what he stands for or anything. I'm pretty sure he's just going in blind."

Marlene huffed and puffed as she slid the sleeping plant away from her. Its mouth was rimmed with red from the tranquilizing powder, but it was knocked out and snoring, so she felt she'd done her job. Sitting back in her seat, she glanced around to see how her neighbors were doing and felt somewhat accomplished when she saw that she'd been one of the few to manage without assistance. The rest of the class seemed to be in tears, given up, or was asking for help. Lily was the only one who didn't seem to be the least bit concerned with what she'd accomplished. "You're scared for him," Marlene said.

Lily laughed, but it wasn't full of mirth. Hers was a bitter, disgusted sound. "I know I shouldn't be. What gives him the right to be treating people like this? What gives him the right to make me worry and still be expected to care about him? Why should I care?"

"He's been your friend for a long time," Marlene said. She pulled off her gloves and put them on the table next to her shears. "I think that would earn you some respect. He ought to have some consideration for what you're giving him. If you're going to have the heart to get worried about what he's doing, he ought to have the kindness to stop your need to worry."

Lily shook her head. Her face had gone pink and the rims of her eyes were red. Marlene wondered if she was about to cry and if they ought to leave the room, but her friend didn't seem intent on going anywhere. "I don't think any of this would've happened if he'd gotten into Gryffindor. I think it's something based on Slytherin. I think that's what's got him so up in arms. He wants to do something for his house or something. It's all pride. It's all stupid boy pride, I know it is."

Marlene patted her arm and wished she could say something more comforting, but by the time she thought of anything, Sprout had called them to attention and had them putting their stuff away. Lily was the first to finish and the first to leave. She didn't even wait for Marlene to catch up, even though her friend was scrambling to.

"Don't take it to heart," Moira said when she caught up to Marlene.

"You saw all that?" Marlene asked.

Moira nodded. "She's just distracted. My friends get that way, too. She'll come around."


	8. Chapter 8

"What's cookin' good lookin'?" Sirius asked.

Marlene had approached him at the Gryffindor breakfast table and she stopped for a moment, stunned and unsure of what to say. A couple of heads turned to look at them and her blush deepened. James Potter had snorted into his cereal, but when Sirius caught him doing that, he gave his friend a disapproving look.

"I was being serious," he said. Marlene watched him grin and wink at his friend before turning back to her and resting his arms on the table. His eyes were shining with mirth and James still hadn't stopped choking on his food. "What can I do for you?" Sirius asked in a calmer voice.

Marlene nodded and stepped closer. "I have a small question to ask you."

Sirius nodded back. "And I'm listening," he said, leaning back on the bench. Part of Marlene thought he was going to fall and wanted to reach out to prevent that from happening, but when she saw his feet hook around the bar holding up the middle of the table, her fears were abated. She turned her attention back to the task at hand.

"I was just wondering—could you help me with my potions homework? You seem to be so good at it—at potions, I mean—and I'm really lost and my friend Moira said that you'd probably know what you were doing, so…could you please help?"

Marlene stared at him for a long time. She could feel Potter's eyes on the side of her head, and she could sense his bewilderment at her asking this kind of question. Sirius didn't seem to know what to say himself. He kept scratching his head and turning to his half-eaten breakfast before turning back to her.

"Um…I guess so?" he said. Marlene watched him and James exchange a look before James went back to eating, practically sticking his nose in his bowl. "I mean, what's the trouble with?" he asked, turning back to her.

Marlene shrugged. "Everything, really. I'm not very good at potions."

Sirius studied her for a minute before he asked in a lower voice, "Isn't there a Hufflepuff you could talk to about this?" The pained expression on his face burned something deep in her stomach and she nodded.

"Right. Sorry I asked. I guess you really can't help me," she said and turned to walk back to her table.

Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest. She could feel the eyes of half the Great Hall on her—the half that had shown up to breakfast, anyway—and especially Moira's, who'd chosen to sit at the end of the table so that she could best peer over the other students' heads and gauge what was going on. Marlene could feel everything inside of her growing hot as she walked back towards the table, but that was when she heard him call out

"Marlene! Hang on a second!"

Marlene stopped. She could feel the eyes of more students turning to look at her, trying to see what all of the commotion was about and what was going on, before they turned back to what they were doing. Moira, who'd heard as well as she had, let her jaw drop. Even from halfway across the room, Marlene could see her friend's eyes glittering.

_The plan is working. I don't believe it!_

She turned around and saw that Sirius had spun in his seat. He waved her back over and she came to stand a few paces away. A few faces from the Ravenclaw table filled her peripheral vision, but they soon disappeared again, annoyed by the yelling and screaming coming from the infamous Gryffindors. Sirius had a sheepish look on his face.

"If you need help, I could tutor you a bit. I mean, I'm not the best at potions—I'm only kind of fair—but I could help," he said. He scratched the back of his neck and gave her a half-smile that told her he wasn't very comfortable with the way this was going. She couldn't help glancing at James from the corner of her eye. His friend was staring at him, his spoon suspended between his mouth and his bowl. She couldn't read the expression on his face, but when he felt her staring and looked up, she blushed and he smirked into his food again.

Marlene nodded. "Okay. That would be great. Thanks so much!" she said, turning and walking back to her table. She couldn't help giving Moira a huge grin now that her back was turned.

"Hang on!" he called. "What time?"

Marlene glanced at him over her shoulder. He had his hands braced on his knees now, and she wondered just how uncomfortable with all of this he was getting. "Tonight after dinner, if you can. I'll have more homework by then, so you can help me with that."

He nodded at her and gave her a thumbs up. "Great," he said. "See you in the study area."

Marlene nodded back. "See you!" she said. She practically ran back to where Moira was sitting, with her mouth hanging down towards her knees. A few of the onlookers followed her back to the table with their eyes, but she didn't care about their scrutiny any longer. She sat down across from her friend with a lighter feeling in her stomach.

"It's working," she said.

Moira grinned and leaned forward until she was so far across the table that her long hair threatened to spill over into her orange juice. Marlene reached out and pulled the goblet away as Moira gave it a dirty look. "So he's going to do it? He's going to help?" she asked.

Marlene nodded. She could feel the muscles in her face start to hurt, but she didn't care. "He says he'll help!"

Moira laughed once and then sat back, digging into her food once more. "This is great! We'll know if it was Severus by tonight, and then everyone can rest easy again."

Marlene paused, her face falling as she watched her friend shovel eggs into her mouth. "That's not what I asked him about."

Moira looked up and the light in her eyes began to dim. "Then what was all that hemming and hawing about the study room over?" she asked.

"I thought you said I should get to know him first. I thought we agreed that I couldn't just ask him to interrogate Severus outright!"

Moira let her fork fall to her plate with a clatter as she covered her eyes with her hands. "Oh, Merlin, no. No! I thought we'd agreed that you already knew him—or that he knew you—and you could just ask him!"

The good feeling in Marlene's chest began to sink. "Apparently not. He's going to help me study potions tonight."

Moira picked her head up out of her hands and nodded at her plate, but she didn't look her friend in the eye. "That's a start. If you can ask him then, we can get this over with."

Marlene watched her friend continue to eat while Marlene bit at her lip.

_I don't think it's going to be that simple_, she wanted to say. Part of her didn't think Moira was going to agree with that statement.


	9. Chapter 9

"So do know what the properties of a mandrake root are?" Sirius asked while they were working.

Marlene shook her head, but her thoughts were far from the table they were sitting at. She was trying to muster up the courage to ask him about Severus. In her head, she'd already gone through one or two different ways of asking about him, but she wanted an outlet to broach the question in. As he spoke, she listened fleetingly for a place she might interject and ask the questions she'd been formulating, but every time she thought she found one, he covered it up again by turning away from the subject. She bit her lip.

"Did you get any of that?" he asked after they'd gone over the whole list of notes that he'd written down in front of her.

Marlene nodded, still chewing on the inside of her mouth. When she looked over at him, he was frowning, as though he didn't believe her. "I get it, I do—it's just putting it into practice, is all," she confessed. "I'm not very good at mixing potions together, either."

Sirius nodded and started to put his books away. "I get that, yeah. It's easy to do in practice."

Marlene began folding her notes up and stuffing them in her book for later. She kept her movements slow and finally decided to just go for it with the questions. "Are there any kids in your class who are really good at potions?" she asked. She was thinking of Severus, whom she'd seen go into the potions class with Sirius a few times, always with a surly look on his face.

Sirius shrugged and hoisted his bag onto the table. "No one especially. I mean, it gets harder as you get older, so I guess we all find something we fall out of."

Marlene fumbled with the strap of her bag. "But there's no one person who's better at it than the rest? No one who's got a specialty for potions almost?" she asked. She wanted to be coy about it, but she could feel herself starting to sound like a police officer during an interrogation.

Sirius must've felt that, too, because she found him looking at her with a weird expression on his face. She stood up and he didn't move, but she could see the suspicion rising behind his eyes. "I suppose," he said, elongating his words.

Marlene sighed. She ran her nail along the seam of her bag's strap. _Might as well keep going with this_. "Any particular person you can think of?" she asked. She didn't really look at Sirius, just sort of glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. When he stood up, he was at least half a head taller than she was, and it made her feel very short by comparison. She stepped back a bit so that he wasn't standing so close to her, towering so far over her. Right now, it made her feel small.

"I guess there's this one kid, but I doubt you'd know him. He's a real twat," Sirius said. The suspicion was gone from his voice and he pulled his bag over his shoulder so that it strained against his neck.

Marlene shrugged again. Her hands had moved to the clasp of her bag and she ran her thumbnail over the edge of the metal attachments. "I know a lot of twats. Maybe I'll know this one."

Sirius shook his head. "Why are you asking me about this?" he asked. Marlene felt her stomach drop as the rest of her plans slipped through the already-hazardous crack in the floor that they were lying on. He started walking towards the door and she followed at a slower pace, forcing him to slow down, too. "Did any of those notes help at all, or were you just saying that to make me feel better?"

Marlene whipped her head up to look at him as it dawned on her. _He thinks I'm trying to replace him._ "No! Don't be ridiculous!" she said. The hallway was quiet, void of students running about and shouting, so her words echoed over the stone. A small breeze wafted by and made the candles dance in their torches. Marlene felt the whole scene to be oddly appropriate—talking about Severus was an eerie topic.

"Then…why all the questions?" Sirius asked. His voice had gone flat. Their steps slowed in time to the conversation, which Marlene was glad for. She didn't want to stop talking about this now that she'd finally gotten to where she actually needed to be, but she wished they were still in the study room. At least then they'd have no chance of running into Severus.

Marlene sighed. "Can we find an empty classroom before I tell you?" she asked in a small voice.

She felt Sirius's eyes on her face for a long time before he nodded. She smiled a bit and started walking down the hall at a faster pace. They flew past a couple of hallways before they found one with a closed classroom. Unlocking the door, Marlene slipped inside and waved Sirius after her.

They could hardly see anything. The windows had dirt on them and the grime filtered the small amounts of moonlight that were being shone through. Marlene heard Sirius walk into a desk, cursing, and then pulled out her wand.

"Lumos," she whispered, closing the door with hardly a snap. Beside her, the Gryffindor was gripping his knee and sitting on top of the desk he'd run into. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "I'll be fine."

Marlene took a deep breath and sat down on the desk behind his, putting her feet up on the seat beside his legs. The light from her wand made long shadows on his face, giving him a ghostly, emaciated look that frightened her. She tried to hold the light up a bit more, pushing the shadows away.

"I need to ask you something about a kid named Snape," she said.


	10. Chapter 10

_Dear Mum,_

_I don't know what to say, since I know that things are heating up around here and that everything we used to know is getting to be so dangerous. But at the same time, I have to tell somebody, and I know you won't talk to anyone about it. One of the Slytherins called Lily a mudblood._

_I know. It's horrible. She spent most of the afternoon crying in the bathroom and not speaking to anybody. I can't tell you who it was, but believe me, it happened. I wasn't there, but Moira was and she came running over to me when she heard it. Lily's been heartbroken. The kid who said it was one of her best friends. As you might imagine, he's not anymore. Some of the other Gryffindors are starting an uproar about it, but the teachers have their eyes and ears open, so I don't think it's going to get anywhere._

_I'm all right. I'm trying to be there for Lily as best as I can. She really needs a friend right now and I think she's having trouble processing what just happened. Yes, it's been a day, but it still hurts and I don't think people like Moira understand it. They don't know what it's like, having non-magical parents. Not that I do, but I can guess. Some of the people here treat you like dirt—like you have seven heads and crawled out of a mausoleum. It's ridiculous, if you ask me._

_Classes are getting harder. I'm not sure I'm going to be as strong with my grades as I usually am, although I think I'm getting much better at actually doing magic. I'll let you know._

_Give dad a kiss for me. I can't wait to see you all in the summer, where we can talk properly and sit in the shade and drink our teas together. I love it at Hogwarts, you know I do, but there are those little things that I miss from home. It'll be good to get back again, and get away from all of this drama. That is, if it doesn't follow me out the door. (Here's to hoping!)_

_Write soon._

_Love,_

_Marlene _

"Was that your letter home?" Lily asked.

Marlene jumped away from the window, where she'd been watching a tawny owl taking off into the clear blue distance, her letter dangling from its clawed foot. As soon as she caught sight of her friend, though, the delight she'd gotten in sending the letter off diminished greatly. Lily's eyes were heavy and her shoulders had slumped. Marlene wondered if it was because she was leaning against the door to the room, but her friend's robes were also more rumpled than she'd seen them in ages, and her hair had a messiness about it that wasn't characteristic of the razor-sharp, cleanly-cut Lily whom she'd always known. Marlene relaxed and gestured to the window with one hand.

"Yeah, I've just written my mum. I think she's worried about me."

"Has she written you back?"

Marlene shook her head. "Not in ages, it feels like."

"Then how do you know she's worried?"

The comment took Marlene by surprise and she studied her friend for a second, trying to determine what Lily had meant by it. When her friend's expression didn't change, she shrugged. "Just a feeling, I guess."

Lily nodded and walked further into the room. Overhead, a few owls fluttered their wings and hopped about on their perches, dropping pellets and soft calls to the dirty straw at their feet. "I should probably try writing my mum, too. I know she misses me, but I can't—" She broke off her sentence, looking off to the side and clenching her jaw. Marlene saw her eyes grow narrow. "I don't want to talk about it, I guess."

"About Snape," Marlene said.

"About Severus, yes." Lily reached out a hand and tapped the short stone perch in the center of the room with the tip of her finger. Something appeared to fall away at the touch, and Marlene hoped it wasn't some sort of poo residue chipping off. "I mean, I do. I want to talk about it. I feel like I should. I want to, but I don't." She glanced at Marlene, a bit of color rising to her cheeks. "D'you know what I mean?"

Marlene nodded, sticking her thumbs in her robe pockets and swinging her hands at her sides to flap the fabric.

Lily's gaze grew distant again and she looked at the stone perch in front of her. "I don't want to tell everybody, though. They all knew we were friends, but I didn't think they'd all care this much about what happened. It's like—you know how interested people get about you when they realize that you're dead?"

Marlene stopped her hands from swinging and Lily laughed. It was a nervous sound that seemed to fall to the floor like the calls of the birds around them.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound so morbid. But that's kind of what it's like—suddenly, you're interesting and everybody wants to know everything about you. Or they want to know what happened and why. And I just don't feel like telling them."

"No one's making you tell those people. You know that you don't owe them anything, right?" Marlene asked, quieting her voice so that it wouldn't feel like an attack. She didn't want to do anything that might scare off her already trembling friend, especially when it seemed like Lily was already rearing to run off.

The Gryffindor nodded and continued her light chipping of the grime on the perch. "I know. I'm just sad about it, I guess."

"You're allowed," Marlene said with a light laugh.

"And I feel like I need to talk about it, but not with them—not with everyone."

"You don't have to."

Lily let out a long sigh and faced Marlene again, her eyes bright with sudden determination. "I stopped talking to him, Marlene. I've stopped—everything."

Marlene blinked at her, unsure of what she was hearing. She hated to admit it, but the brightness that'd been added to her friend's eyes had given her a somewhat crazier appearance. It was more than a little unnerving. "Because he called you a—well, you know."

But Lily shook her head. "It was more than that. You didn't really know him, so you didn't really know what he was up to. He's been running around with those awful people—those ones who practice Dark Arts magic. You know the ones. They're all so excited about it, and now they've got him—" She broke off her sentence again, her eyes softening. Lily put a hand to her mouth and sniffled loudly, letting her breath out through her mouth. When Marlene started forward to comfort her, Lily shook her head.

"I don't understand. I don't understand why good people like Severus turn out so badly. No, sorry, that's not what I meant. I meant—why do they go where only bad things happen?"

Marlene closed the distance between them and put a hand on her friend's shoulder. Up close, she could see the bags under Lily's eyes and the shine of grease where it was starting to build up at the roots of her hair. It made her wonder just how long it had been since Lily last slept, or if she'd been up all this time worrying about her former friend.

"Am I crazy?" Lily asked in a soft voice. "To be caring about him still, I mean?"

"No. He's your friend—or he was. Of course you'd be worried about him. But like you said, you've stopped everything. It's time, now, to start walking away, I think." Marlene watched her friend wipe a finger under each eye, sniffling again, before she straightened up a bit more. Her hand dropped back to her side.

"I can't tell my mum about this. I don't think they'd understand. It's not their jargon."

"They still deserve to know," Marlene said. "I mean, he was your friend. And your mum can probably help you out with this better than anyone else can."

The corner of Lily's mouth twitched upwards. "Yeah, I s'pose you're right."

They walked out of the owlry together. When they passed James and Sirius, the boys' faces opened up and they looked like they were about to come rushing over, but Marlene shook her head. Their jaws snapped shut and they sidled along a bit more, turning the corner to avoid running into Lily, whose eyes were facing the ground. The two girls walked to the door of the Gryffindor House and parted ways as Lily caught sight of another Gryffindor girl whom Marlene didn't know and continued through the portrait with her.

Feeling somewhat dejected for having to share her more popular friend with the rest of the Hogwarts population, Marlene made her way back down the stairs towards the kitchens and the Hufflepuff common room. As she walked, she went back in her mind, thinking about the conversation she'd had with Sirius in the classroom.

_"Look, I don't know all that much about him," Sirius had said, the lines of his face growing hard. "I knew he was making trouble with the other kids who were into Dark Arts, but aside from being a sniveling little snot—" He'd made a helpless gesture with his hands and let them fall to his sides again._

_When he'd failed to say anything else, Marlene spoke. "I've been worried about Lily. I think he's having a bad influence on her. She doesn't seem to think there's anything connecting him to the activity with Volde—I mean, You-Know-Who."_

_He'd stared at her for a second. "You mean the break-in?"_

_She'd nodded._

_"That's kind of a strong accusation."_

_"Do you know any other Hogwarts students who might be behind this?" she'd asked. A heat had risen to her cheeks and made her chest grow hot. "I mean, you're the one who likes to torment him. I should think that you and your lot—you and James and everyone—would be the first people to—"_

_"Hey! Hey! Calm down, Mar," he'd said, holding up his hands as she took a deep breath. Sirius had laughed a little bit and Marlene had pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders, all too aware of just how bothered she'd gotten over this. As he'd regarded her cooling self, she'd felt a bit embarrassed, turning to look at her desk. "It's okay. You're right. We did suspect him—we still do. I mean, yes, it's a strong accusation, but he falls right into the category, doesn't he? I mean, we might not like him, but you have to give him credit," he'd said with disgust in his voice. "The kid knows how to worm his way into things."_

_"Including Lily's life," Marlene had said. As soon as the words had exited her mouth, she'd clamped her jaw shut. Sirius laughed again._

_"That I think we can agree on, yes."_

_We can agree_, Marlene repeated, a small smile spreading across her face at the thought of it. She was so lost that she turned a corner and smacked right into the Gryffindor himself. Each of them let out a cry and jumped back, Sirius with a teasing smile on his face and Marlene red-faced with embarrassment.

"Somewhere you need to be, McKinnon?" he asked, straightening his robes.

"I am so sorry!" she said, covering her mouth with both hands. "I was a little lost in thought and I wasn't looking when I rounded the corner—"

Sirius clapped a hand on her back and shook his head. "Relax, McKinnon. I'm not going to hold a grudge over it. Besides, it's not every day you get to smack into someone so good-looking—"

Marlene felt her heart rise.

"—As me," he finished, flashing her a broad smile and her heart deflated again when she realized he was teasing.

"Oh, Merlin," she snapped, punching him lightly on the shoulder. "You're so full of it sometimes, you know that?" she asked as he moved around her, walking away.

He just shrugged. "That's why they love me!"

Marlene rolled her eyes, but then stopped when she remembered something. "Wait!" she called, turning round the corner. In the middle of the hall, Sirius about-faced and looked at her. "Thank you for the chat a while back. About Severus, I mean. I'm sorry I didn't properly thank you for talking to me about it before."

He smiled, raising and dropping his shoulders once. "Don't mention it. There's nothing more romantic than talking about Snivellous, it would seem!"

Marlene ducked her head.

"Although, I have to admit, I really would've liked to have a proper date. Y'know, one where we're not just talking about homework and Snivelly's undermining of magical society."

The heat she'd had in her cheeks and chest the night of their chat rose to her cheeks again, but instead of being from anger, this time it was from hopefulness. _That had been a date? I'd been on a date with Sirius?_ "Yeah?" she asked, trying to keep the squeak out of her voice.

Sirius nodded, his hands swinging at his sides. "Yeah. I think I'd like to go on a proper date with you. What d'you think?"

Her body seemed to inflate itself with his words. "I think I'd like that, too."

He smiled again and the gesture stretched his face out in a rather pleasant way. "That sounds brilliant. A date with Marlene McKinnon. Would you like to lounge about on the front lawn tomorrow, then? After classes?"

"Why not?"

Sirius gave her a small nod. "Tomorrow. I'll meet you outside of the Great Hall. We'll have just eaten," he said, and turned around, waving one hand in the air behind him. "See you then, Miss McKinnon."

The heat in her cheeks rose as high as her forehead and she watched him turn the corner. "See you," she whispered and then booked it back to her common room to tell Moira the news.


	11. Chapter 11

Marlene was getting ready for the date with Sirius when Moira knocked on the door to the girls' dormitory.

"Lily's outside. She asked to see you."

Marlene absorbed this for a second, turning to readjust the slight ruffles on her blouse. The clock on her bedside table read eight at night and she knew Sirius would be expecting her sometime soon. "Did she say what she wanted?"

In the mirror, she could see her friend shaking her head as she walked into the room. Moira still wore her uniform shirt, even though it was Friday night and they had a long weekend ahead of them. "She just seemed upset and asked to talk to you." Moira reached up and smoothed the sleeve of Marlene's shirt. "I like this color pink. It looks good on you."

Smiling, Marlene picked up her small purse and stuffed her wand inside. "I'll let you know what happens tonight. Don't wait up too long," she said.

"I'll be asleep before you get back!" her friend called as she closed the door behind her.

Just as Moira had said, Lily stood outside the Hufflepuff common room door. Like Moira, she still wore her school robes, but unlike Moira, she was worrying her hands and she had a drawn look on her face.

Marlene put a hand on her friend's arm as she climbed out the door. "Hey."

Lily jumped, spinning around. When she saw who it was, though, her face crumbled and she started to cry.

"What's happened?" Marlene asked, alarmed. She hugged her friend's shoulder and felt Lily's tear-stained face press into her blouse.

"It's Severus. I'm so worried about him. This whole thing with the Dark Arts and following some person he doesn't even know is terrifying and I don't know what to do about it."

Marlene rubbed a hand down her friend's back, making a face as she remembered feeling the same way when Lily had been close to Snape. "Maybe there's nothing you can do."

Lily picked her head up, her reddened eyes dark.

"You offered him your friendship and he threw it away. He clearly didn't value it as much as you would've liked, otherwise he would've been kinder."

The dark look in Lily's eyes didn't go away. "Do you really think that's the truth?"

Marlene nodded. "I'm not saying you should be happy about it, but he chose a side and yours wasn't the one he wound up standing on."

Lily studied Marlene's face for a long moment. Finally, she took a deep breath through her nose and brushed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. "You look very nice today. What's the occasion?"

Marlene reddened as she smiled. "I have a date with Sirius."

Her friend gawked. "Wait—what Sirius? Sirius Black?"

Marlene nodded.

"But—but why?"

"He—asked me out," Marlene said, her smile slipping. She took a step back from Lily, but her friend caught her arm.

"Marly, he's a bully. Why would you go on a date with him? You saw the way he treated Severus—"

"And then I saw the way Severus treated you. Lily, I don't think you should defend the kid anymore. Like I said, he chose this side when he said those horrible things about you. And me too, for that matter."

Lily scoffed, shaking her head, her eyes growing brighter as they spoke. Marlene didn't know if it was from anger or her earlier tears. "But Sirius? Really? He's friends with that James Potter. The two of them together—they're just horrible and mean and cruel and—"

"Sirius is nice," Marlene muttered, staring at her shoes.

"Oh, ho ho, you think so, do you?"

Marlene frowned at her friend, staring at Lily through her eyelashes. "Have you even talked to Sirius? Or James, for that matter?"

"I don't have to. Actions speak louder than words."

"Well, maybe you should give them a chance. I did, and—"

"And now you're going on a date with them, just like every other pining Hogwarts bimbo has ever gotten to do."

The air went still. Marlene glared at Lily, who slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with shock at what she'd done. Suddenly, Marlene felt stupid in her ruffled pink shirt. She felt equally stupid for having spoken to Lily about it.

Her friend stepped forward, one hand reaching out. "Marlene. Marlene, I'm so sorry. I'm—"

But Marlene stepped back, her eyes filling with tears. She clutched her small purse in front of her like a shield, but she didn't take her eyes away from her friend. "You're upset about Severus, I know that. But that doesn't give you an excuse to act like he did that day on the lawn. You're so worried about what's become of him that you've acted just like him. For your information, James has never said a word against muggle-borns, and to his credit, neither has Sirius. They're not like that."

Wrapping the strap of her purse over her shoulder, Marlene lifted her chin high, even though her eyes threatened to spill her tears. Lily had averted her gaze and was staring at the ground.

"I'm going on my date. I really hope you reconsider your attitude towards Sirius."

With that, Marlene turned and left. She wandered down the corridor, leaving Lily behind her, and only wiped her eyes once before she got to the Great Hall.

Sirius was waiting for her at the front doors. He wore a nice shirt and pants and his shoes even shined a little. In one hand, he held a small wildflower. When she saw that, Marlene smiled a little and strode forward into his sight.

"Is that for me?" she asked as she neared him.

He looked up at the sound of her voice. A huge grin spread across his face and he held the flower out to her. "Yeah, it is. Thanks for coming," he said, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her in for a hug. "I wasn't sure you were going to."

Momentarily stunned by his immediate display of affection, Marlene returned the hug. He smelled good, like shampoo and soap. She felt a wave of relief flow through her when she remembered she'd put on deodorant. "I almost didn't. I got held up outside of the Hufflepuff common room."

When he cocked his head, she shook hers.

"I'll tell you as we walk. Where are we going?"

A grin spread across his face and his hand slid into hers. Their warm palms felt soft and good together, and the contact made Marlene blush. "I'll show you. C'mon."

They left through the front doors and started down the lawn towards the forbidden forest. Just when she thought they were going to enter it—in the dark of the night, no less—Sirius turned to the left and they followed the line of trees up another hill towards an outcropping of cliff-like rocks. Here, the bright light of the silver moon illuminated the ground and the view of the trees beyond. Everything was awash in white and deep blue colors of varying shades. He led her down the outcropping a bit until they were at a small pocket of rocks forming something of an open cave, with a boulder covering their heads and plenty of space for four people to sit and have a picnic. As they approached, she saw the bundle of blankets padding the ground.

"I thought you said you didn't think I'd come," Marlene teased as he helped her down to the area.

He gave her a crooked smile. "I'd hoped you would, so I made sure to be ready, just in case. Welcome, Miss McKinnon, to the Thinking Area of Sirius Black."

Marlene stared out at the view of a thousand and one treetops tipped with moonlight and skirted with deep blue shadows. "It's lovely."

"Now, what was it that almost kept you from me this evening?" he asked as they settled themselves onto the bundles of blankets.

She told him the story of Lily's crying, her fears, and what she'd said about Sirius. The man in question listened without interruption and when she'd finished, he whistled.

"Snivelly has her wrapped around his finger, all right."

Marlene shook her head. "Not anymore. I think I shamed her a bit."

Sirius patted her back, making her blush. "Good for you. I think Lily and James can both be hotheads at points. They need to be deflated every once in a while."

"You're not mad at her?"

Sirius shook his head. "I think she's right to be upset, but I also think she needs time to move away from it. She's still hurting. I don't think she's dealt with it as properly as she could've."

Marlene gave a small laugh, making him smile.

"What'd I say?"

She shook her head and turned her purse over in her hands. "I'm just surprised. That's quite an astute comment, coming from the bully."

He snorted and lay back, resting his head on a bundle. "Only a bully to the bullies, Miss McKinnon. They need someone their size to beat up and I'm happy to be that person."

Marlene stared at him where he lay, his eyes glittering with the night sky, and smiled.

"So, how was it?"

Marlene smiled to herself in the mirror, the image of Moira lounging at the end of her bed filling the background of her vision. As she pulled out her earrings and smoothed on her pajamas, she thought of holding Sirius's hand in hers, of the smell of his shampoo, and of the things he'd told her while they sat.

"It was nice," she said, turning and padding to her bed. As she turned down the covers, she saw Moira sit up, pouting.

"Nice? That's it? That's all you have to say?"

"It was very nice?" Marlene said. She laughed a bit at Moira's angry face and folded her legs under the covers. "He was sweet—a real gentleman. We went for a short walk and sat under the stars and watched the moonlight over the trees—"

"And…started kissing?" Moira asked, a wicked grin spreading across her face.

Marlene shook her head, but she couldn't hide her smile. "No, not yet."

Moira smacked the bed. "Oh, come on! That's so lame! How can you know he likes you if he hasn't kissed you yet?"

"Well, maybe he's being gentle about it. Maybe he doesn't want to force the issue," Marlene said, but Moira's scoffs drowned her words.

"Puh-leeze, Mar. He's a guy. There's only one thing on their minds and you know exactly what that is," she said. Much to Marlene's embarrassment, she began making gyrating motions with her hips.

Marlene threw a pillow at her friend and glanced at the two other girls occupying the room. "Stop it, you'll wake them up."

"Mar, listen to me. This is Sirius Black we're talking about. His whole schpeal is getting with women. He's gorgeous, he's a Gryffindor, and he's got this incredible swagger about him. Plus, he's super smart and he acts like he isn't. The only guys like that are the ones who get all the girls and aren't afraid to show it."

Marlene smoothed the covers down around her legs. The yellow comforter had a softer glow in the light coming from the heater warming the center of the room and it made her glad that the person who'd designed the room hadn't decided to make everything black, instead. The yellow felt right—it matched the bright, hopeful feeling in the center of her chest, the one that had bloomed to life when Sirius had hugged her goodnight outside of the Hufflepuff door, and then stole a quick kiss right before he took off towards his own bed. She'd been glowing since she'd gotten inside. "Well, maybe he just likes people to think he's that way. With me, he seemed different."

Moira winked at her. "That's because you haven't thrown yourself at him." She turned down her covers and crawled into her bed lying on her side with her arm under her head. "Mark my words, Mar, he's a heart breaker."

Marlene shook her head and turned over on her side, trying to block sight of her friend the way she was mentally trying to drown out Moira's words with memories of her time with Sirius. _You're wrong, Moira. He's not like that._

She thought of Lily and her upset right before the date, and then of how calmly Sirius explained his beliefs about it. _He actually cares about people._


	12. Chapter 12

It came as more than a shock to Marlene when she saw Lily and James striding into the Great Hall together once the weekend had ended. She and Moira traded a glance over the table, but when the girl in question looked over, they bowed their heads over their food.

The shock didn't go away for the rest of the week, either. By the time the next weekend rolled around, Lily had spent more than enough time with James that Marlene realized they were becoming friends.

"Shut up," Lily said when Marlene stared at her as they met up on the lawn.

Marlene grinned. "You're blushing."

Lily put a hand to her cheek, but the color only grew darker.

"Have you changed your mind about our dear Mr. Potter?"

Rolling her eyes, Lily leaned back and rested her head on the grass. "He's a nice young man."

Marlene laughed. "You sound like my mother."

True enough, though, James and Lily could be seen walking around together after classes. The sight warmed Marlene's heart, especially given how much more time she and Sirius were spending together. After their first date, they'd returned to his Thinking Spot a few times more and talked about how things were going. Sirius told her how he'd gone to live with James because of his parents' overly radical view of Purebloods and Marlene told him about how things were getting on with Lily.

"What about you and your family?" he asked once.

Marlene shrugged. "There's not much to tell. My parents work for the ministry. We have a nice house. I've lived in the same place all my life, so coming to Scotland has been a real treat," she said with a smile.

"Sounds very…normal," Sirius said. He laughed and tossed a pebble down into the forest below. "Do you have any siblings?"

"Just one. A little brother. He's annoying, but he grows on people."

"What's his name?"

"Kevin."

Sirius snorted. "My little brother's named Regulus. What a pompous name to give a child."

Marlene nodded. "Is he like you, your brother?"

"Not much. He's in Slytherin, the bastard."

"I'm guessing you're not close?"

"We don't get on well, no."

She nodded again. "That must be hard."

"Not as much as you'd think."

"Does James have a sibling?"

Sirius shook his head. "But his house is big, so they have plenty of space."

Quiet fell over them for a minute and then Marlene tapped his knee. "I'm sorry you and your parents don't like each other."

Reaching out, Sirius caught her hand in his. Their fingers gripped each other and the feeling raced up Marlene's arm, stunning her momentarily.

"Don't be. You can bet they're not."

_Dear mum,_

_It's been quite a crazy few days. I know I said I would write, but as I've said, it's been crazy. Lily broke off her friendship with Severus and started a new one with James Potter. The two have been almost inseparable for a week now. I hope it's meant to last. Moira just enjoys it for the gossip._

_I've also been talking to Sirius Black, a friend of James. He's a really nice boy. He's even the kind that most girls chase after in their spare time. It's not like me to gush this way, but he's quite a sweetheart and he's been good to me this whole year. He's even listened to me worrying about Lily._

_Don't tell dad or Kevin just yet. I don't want them getting their knickers in a twist when I'm on holiday. For now, I'm going to try to enjoy this._

_Any news about what's going on in the "real world"? The Prophet isn't good for much of the really interesting stuff. But I suppose I'll hear all about it later on, when I get home, yeah?_

_I miss you. Being here is good and entertaining, but I miss you and I miss your food. We'll talk more when I get home._

_Much love,_

_Marlene_

"I'm so ready to get out of here," Moira said as she stretched her arms over her head.

The Hufflepuff common room was uncommonly quiet and the smells of ink, parchment, and students sweating over final grades drifting over to her and Marlene where they were sitting in front of the fireplace. The warm afternoon sun shone through the rounded windows and illuminated the polished furniture where the two girls lounged.

"I just can't wait to finally be getting outside again," Moira said from beneath her yawn.

Marlene slammed her book shut, making both Moira and her cat, Gromley, sit up to attention. "Let's do it, then!" she said and started stuffing her books away.

Moira laughed, the sound uncertain. "Um, we can't. We're supposed to be studying."

"You can read a book outside, can't you?"

"Well…"

Marlene already had her bag over her shoulder, though. "C'mon. Let's go. The day awaits."

Giggling like schoolgirls, the Hufflepuffs spilled out onto the lawn and hurried towards the trees. As they made their way over, they noticed a couple of other students standing around in a small circle.

Marlene stopped, holding out her arm to stop Moira, too. Voices drifted up to them and she could hear Snape's among them, his words snake-like as he spoke.

"This will teach you not to mess with us again," one of the kids was saying with him, so that the chorus of their voices tangled around each other. Marlene saw a flash of light and then heard someone else—someone screaming.

"What on earth—?" she whispered at the same time she heard someone else call, "GET AWAY FROM HIM!"

A Ravenclaw fifth year hurried down the hill and barreled into the group of students. Two of them fell to the ground and then a whole lot of shouting ensued as the other kids in the circle tried to help the fallen ones stand up. Marlene turned to Moira, who had her eyes glued to the scene.

It was then that she noticed the crowd that was gathering. A whole bunch of Ravenclaws appeared where their fellow had been right before breaking into the circle. As the students fought—she could hear the growls of anger and the sounds of fists connecting to body parts—a few Gryffindors and a couple more Hufflepuffs joined the onlookers. Marlene wondered if anyone knew what was going on.

"Enough!"

The divination professor appeared through the crowd of Gryffindors, wand held aloft and pulling the two students apart. The professor's headscarf was slightly askew, but the anger and determination on her face was unmistakable.

"Fabian, lead your brother to the hospital wing. Dolohov, Malfoy, Lestrange, Snape—in my office. NOW."

The group disbanded. Marlene watched as Fabian Prewett carried a severely bloodied Gideon through the same crowd of Gryffindors that the professor had taken. Behind them, the professor led the four students who'd been beating up Gideon—Slytherins whose eyes glimmered as they passed, being sure to look people in the eye as they did.

"Back to work!" the professor barked at the onlookers.

Marlene nudged Moira and they began to walk away towards the Great Lake when someone tapped her on the shoulder from behind.

"Hey," Sirius said, sounding out of breath. Behind him, James and Lily stood staring at the grop of kids following the professor.

"Hey yourself," Marlene said. "What'd you make of that?"

Sirius laughed, but Lily's face was stricken.

"Are you kidding me? What the hell are they playing at?" she shook her head, but Marlene could see genuine tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Lils," Marlene said.

Her friend just sighed and turned away, walking back up the hill towards the school again. James sent the remaining three a small smile and followed her.

"What's become of us?" Moira asked, watching them go.

Marlene caught Sirius staring at her and held his gaze. "I don't know, but I don't like it," she said. He gave her a grim nod.


	13. Chapter 13

Tensions between the Slytherins and the rest of the Hogwarts Houses remained, if only to escalate by the time Marlene and her fellow seventh years graduated. Along with this, the Prophet seemed to be constantly announcing the ways in which the terrorist named Lord Voldemort was growing in power.

"It makes me sick," Sirius said. "To think, we're walking into a world with someone like this running around."

Marlene folded up the paper and placed it on the picnic table. They were at the Potter's celebrating their graduation. Marlene's mom, Tara, and her father, Keith, had taken up a conversation with James's parents across the yard and hadn't heard any of Sirius's comments. Lily and James, however, sat on the other side of the table with heavy faces that were at odds with the party hats on their heads. Everything at the party—from the bedecked trees dressed in purples, golds, and reds, to the abundance of fragrant flowers in full bloom at the edges of the yard—glowed with the same life that the summer had promised would happen.

Yet there remained an uneasiness. Marlene sensed it the moment she and her parents had arrived at the house. Small wards had been placed around the property and the Potters had had to let the family in personally so that nothing dangerous would go off. Conversation had started out light, but had quickly drifted to the papers when the Potters had asked about school.

Now, Marlene was thankful if only because she was amongst good company. No Pureblood nonsense had ever graced the door of the Potters' house and it would seem that none ever would.

Before the McKinnons left, Sirius pulled Marlene aside in the fading twilight.

"What's going on?" she giggled, following him around the back of the house to a small tree in the corner of the yard. When she saw Lily and James standing there, with huge, beaming smiles on their faces, she stopped in her tracks.

Sirius took both of Marlene's hands in his. "They have something they want to tell us both."

Marlene looked at the couple, who traded an excited glance before Lily burst out, "We're engaged!"

Marlene's jaw dropped. For a second, she didn't know what to say, but when Lily closed the distance and began to hug her, she awoke from her momentary stupor and began to embrace her friend with equal abandon.

"Since when?" Marlene asked.

Lily pulled back and let her friend examine the ring while she talked. "Since yesterday. He didn't give me the ring until just now, so I didn't want to say anything, but it's true. We're engaged!"

The two women embraced again, laughing and holding each other close as the men clapped each other on the back.

"Have you told your parents?" Marlene asked. They made their way back towards the front of the house, the gentle murmurs of their parents' conversation drifting back towards them.

"Tonight. When I get home. They're going to be so shocked, I'm sure," Lily said.

"Congratulations," Marlene whispered into her and James's ears as she hugged each of her friends goodnight. When she hugged Sirius, he held her especially tight, and it left Marlene glowing on the whole ride home.

The excitement over the engagement had hardly settled over the lot of them when Marlene received a letter from Albus Dumbledore. She read what turned out to be an invitation over her breakfast and then called the Potters to share the information.

"It's called the Order of the Phoenix," she said, scanning the letter. "It doesn't say much else, but I'm guessing more will be explained at the meeting?"

"It's from Dumbledore, you say?" James asked.

"Yes. The signature is quite distinct."

"And there's no way to know if this isn't a trick? Your parents are in the ministry, after all, and I wouldn't put it past a fellow like You-Know-Who to find a way to intercept anything like this."

"It didn't arrive by owl. Actually, it came by muggle mail, which is the strangest part."

"Muggle mail? Then you're sure it's not a trick?"

"I can have my parents check. Are you sure you haven't received anything like this?"

"No, nothing."

"I'll get back to you, then, and let you know."

Marlene gave the letter to her parents for debunking. Her father held onto it for a couple of days and then returned it to her.

"Seems safe enough. It's not rigged with anything," he said.

"Apparently it's safe," she told James when she next spoke to him. They sat in his backyard again, only this time there were few colors in the trees outside of the green leaves and his parents were away on errands.

"I've got one, too. So have Sirius and Lily. It would seem we're in for quite a ride, given the company he's choosing to keep."

"You're going to the meeting, right?"

He snorted. "Of course. Dumbledore isn't the kind of person you let down. Besides, he'd know if we didn't."

"Did anyone else get one?"

"Peter—Pettigrew—and Remus."

"Remus Lupin? Your school friend?"

James nodded and brushed his hand through his hair as a small leaf fell and knocked him on the head. "He's excited about it. We all took stabs at figuring out what's going on and he thinks it's some sort of resistance. I really hope he's right. I'm sick of cowering inside all day when I'm not at work."

Marlene turned the letter over and over in her hands, retracing the words she already knew by heart over and over with her eyes. "Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is sit and wait for the right opportunity."

A silence settled between them. Then James asked, "Will you be able to come to the wedding?"

Marlene smiled. "I wouldn't miss it. Not even for You-Know-Who."


	14. Chapter 14

When the night of the first meeting for the Order of the Phoenix came around, Marlene could feel her nerves twitching to the ends of her fingers. Her parents each gave her bracing hugs and reminded her that she'd do splendidly—she was an Auror, after all! With a small smile, she made her way over to the Potter's house, where she, Sirius, Remus, Peter, and Lily made their way towards the meeting place.

The area Dumbledore had chosen had a remote air about it. A small manor overthrown by vines and overgrown shrubbery sat along a street with thin apartment buildings and quiet sidewalks. James walked forward first and held his wand aloft.

If he'd said any words, Marlene couldn't hear them. With a grinding click, the front gate opened and they walked through, sidestepping weeds and minding their steps as they climbed to the front door.

Inside, a long hall big enough to fit a car opened to rooms on either side of them. The last door on the right send them the telltale whispers of voices and this was the one they opened, brushing fallen dust from their faces.

The room was open and well-lit with long rows of square windows filling the opposite wall. A table with at least ten other people, including Dumbledore, sat in the middle of the room, and the group of familiar faces turned towards them as they entered. Dumbledore called out in jubilant surprise.

"Good! You made it! I had hoped you wouldn't get lost. Come in, come in. Sit anywhere, we're a welcoming crowd."

Marlene and Sirius held hands as they made their way towards two empty seats, followed by James, Lily, and Remus, leaving Peter to sit across the table from them with a dour look on his face.

Within no time, however, the rest of the table filled and all attentions were turned towards Dumbledore.

"Good, we're all here. I think everyone knows everyone else, so I'll get right to the point. This house is guarded against all dark magic—magic that Voldemort would use, in other words. Yes, I'm going to say his name and without fear or hesitation," he added when a few people cringed, Marlene included. "It's my belief that fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself. Yes, while Voldemort must be feared, he must also be stopped."

In the darkest voice, Dumbledore leaned forward and stared into the eyes of every member present. "What happens here is not to leave this table. It is not to leave this room or this house. This property is the sole possession of thoughts regarding the resistance. We all know the danger that lies in talking and in the hands of men who have information they don't know how to interpret or understand. So I must ask that, with complete confidence, if you do not feel up to taking on this grave assignment, please leave now so that we might not burden you with something you're unwilling to possibly take to the grave."

Not a soul stirred. Whether it was because of their determination to prove Dumbledore was right in choosing them or because they couldn't escape the gravity of his voice, no one knew. Marlene, however, held herself straighter, more determined than ever to fight for this cause.

Dumbledore smiled a bit and leaned back. "Good. Now that that's settled, I must explain myself. The reason I've chosen each of you is because you all possess some sort of talent and strength which I've found wise beyond your years and necessary for helping us defeat the man calling himself the Dark Lord. This is as much an honor as it is a burden. But it's also necessary. Our purpose is to fight this war against dark forces that threaten to rip us apart. We'll need all of our strength to win and we need to rely on each other to do right."

After the meeting, Marlene felt a heaviness about her. She went home and lay thinking about what Dumbledore had said. It put a worry in her mind that she wasn't sure what to do about.

She called on Moira the next afternoon. Her old friend greeted her with her familiar old warmth, but Marlene could see the lines around her eyes as they went and sat in her front room.

"You're looking well," Marlene said. Her friend laughed.

"Well. That's good, I hope. The last time I looked in a mirror, I wasn't happy with what I saw, but we're all blind to our own beauties, aren't we?"

The bitterness in her voice had Marlene leaping across the room to wrap her arms around her friend's shoulders. "What's happened?" she whispered.

Moira shook her head and rested her face in Marlene's shirt.

"You can tell me. I promise."

"They'll know if I do," Moira said, her voice breathy.

Marlene's heart froze. She pulled away, but Moira covered her face. "Moira, what happened?"

Her friend took a long breath. "It's beginning. That's what they told me. It's beginning and it's only going to get worse from here. This is just the start."

"You haven't even told me what this is."

Now Moira dropped her hands, her fingers wrapped around Marlene's. "Good. You're not involved yet. You can stay safe." Her eyes shone as she spoke, but while Marlene watched her friend's face, it began to harden into resolve. "I need you to get out of here. Go away. Go wherever you need to, but get out. I can't tell you what they did because otherwise they'll come back and make it worse, but I can tell you to get out."

Speechless, Marlene stared at her friend. Moira stood, taking Marlene by the arm, and led her friend from the room tot he door.

"Mar, you're my friend. You're my very best friend in the world. So that's why I'm telling you that you need to get out."

"Wha—"

Moira pushed her onto the threshold and closed the door in her face.

For a second, Marlene didn't know what to do. Then she got an idea. Racing over to the trees lining the side of Moira's home, she disapparated, reappearing in front of the Order of the Phoenix mansion.

Like the magic that he was, Marlene heard a whooshing sound and suddenly, Dumbledore was by her side.

"You knew I was coming?" she asked.

He gave her a smile, but the wariness never left his eyes. "I had a feeling I'd be getting visitors. The divination professor isn't the only psychic in Hogwarts."

Marlene smiled and let him lead her inside. At the table where he'd held their first meeting, Marlene told him what Moira had said. He listened with a grim face as she repeated her friend's words to the echoing room and then stroked his chin with his long, thin fingers.

"What do you think it means?" she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"I think it means she was good to warn you, but now we have more trouble on our hands. Rather, more trouble than we'd had before."

She shifted in her seat as he thought. "What of Lily and James?"

"What about them?"

"Their wedding?"

"It will go on. If there's anything to be learned from all of this, it's that love conquers all. Love will guide us and keep us safe."

Marlene stared at him, unsure of how he meant her to take that, but when he didn't elaborate, she stood up. "I'm going to go home."

"Tell the others, should you see them, what you've learned. I'll let the rest of the Order know."

She nodded and turned to go, but he caught her hand.

"Thank you, Marlene. For telling me this," he said. His eyes glistened with feeling.

She smiled at him and covered his hand with her free one. "I didn't know where else to go."

Again, his eyes shone. "You are always welcome here."

Instead of apparating back to her home, Marlene walked. It was quite a distance and she didn't know how late it would be once she got home, but she liked the smell of the night air and wanted, for a moment at least, the illusion that all was well.

About halfway there, she got a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach. With everything that had happened, it quickly grew to alarm and Marlene jumped to life, disapparating with a picture of her front room in mind.

When she was almost there, she made to land and felt herself get thrown aside. Twirling out of control out of the apparate, Marlene fell to the ground in her front yard. In the light from the street, she could just see the shadow of her front door yawning open.

"What the—"

_BANG!_

Like a rocket, she saw something green and bright exploding inside. She nearly jumped out of her skin. A second later, she heard a cackling coming from her house.

Marlene was on her feet in a second's notice, racing through the door as her heart threatened to jump out of her body. In the foyer, dressed in all black, were three wizards with their wands aloft. Beyond them, in the darkness of the front room, were three people, crouched and crying.

"NO!" she screamed and shoved the first wizard.

Everyone turned at the sound of her voice, but the wizards were the ones to react. Just as her mother, one of the people crying on the floor, called for her to run, the second robed wizard shot a spell at her that had her slammed into the door.

Marlene slumped for a second and then rolled onto her knees. Diving at their legs, she knocked them down. The first wizard was scrambling to stand and had dropped his wand. Grabbed it and shot spells at each of the wizards, missing only the third. He ducked farther into the room.

Standing, she confronted him. Her foot kicked aside his fellows, but he was pointing a wand at her family.

She hardly dared to breathe. "Don't—"

"Avada Kedavra," he snapped.

Screams and a bright green light—the same she'd seen from outside—filled the room as her brother fell dead. It was only then that she realized her father was lying dead on the floor already.

_He was the first._

"NO!" she screamed as her mother went to cradle the body. Marlene moved to block her as the wizard lifted his wand again, but a hand wrapped around her ankle.

Falling forward, Marlene hit the floor. Her jaw cracked and the wand went tumbling from her fingers, coming to a stop beneath the foot of the wizard over her mother.

Marlene locked eyes with her mom as she felt the tip of a wand pressing itself into the back of her head. She could heard her heartbeat in her ears. She could see the same fear in her mother's eyes that was coursing through her own body right now.

"How did you find us?" Marlene whispered.

She swore the wizard over her mother sniggered. "Your dear friend. She warned you about us. Now, she's paid the price of telling and you've paid for knowing."

Marlene took a shaky breath. Just as a cold silence settled over the room, it was broken again by the screams of "AVADA KEDAVRA" that were shouted by the wizards in front of and behind her.

The last thing Marlene saw before she died was the light of her mother's eyes. Then an emptiness filled her body before making its way up to her mind.

She didn't even have time to say goodbye.

The End


End file.
